Most of us truly enjoy coffee in the morning to get our day going and that extra jolt of awareness, but some of us prefer not to. Opinions vary from person to person. At Bellevue East High, the opportunity to engage in activities you enjoy is all around you, whether through a club or an internship—like the Beast Brew.

Bellevue East High has an organization called FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) for students who want to take a deeper dive into business and experience it hands-on. One of the ways FBLA does this is through the internship offered here, The Beast Brew. It’s a simple café for students to practice their money management skills, customer service, and even drink-making. These are facts. The Beast Brew has been open for about eight to nine years, and FBLA started almost thirty-five years ago. Considering students work at the café—with an adult, Mr. Fischer, as the overseer—errors are inevitable. Even if it were not run by students, errors would still be inevitable. 

Here are more facts: The Beast Brew has simple drinks; considering it is inside a library, blenders aren’t ideal and pose potential liabilities for a student-run café. The menu is also very limited due to the fact that the café is a fund raiser, using its earnings to repurchase and restock the products available for sale.

Savannah Stultz, a reporter and student at Bellevue East High, left a very inconsiderate description in response to a drink that was made incorrectly (possibly unbeknownst) at the Beast Brew, comparing it to a well-known professional café, “Scooter’s Coffee.” Her review left many people at Bellevue East offended and baffled at her choice of wording while writing such a harsh response to a café run at her own school. In my opinion, for a reporter, she uses very unsophisticated, and immature language. She states, “While the Scooter’s Coffee menu prices do tend to be on the higher side, I believe that this is balanced out by their quality. It was worth paying a few extra dollars if it meant that I was going to enjoy my drink more, cough cough, Beast Brew.” Using “cough cough” in a newspaper review is quite interesting, Stultz.

Stultz’s “review” is very biased. From the beginning, she showers Scooter’s Coffee with facts about their menu and loving compliments, such as, “When I initially received my Iced Vanilla Latte, it seemed to be just a simple and unremarkable drink. However, once I took that first sip, I was struck by how refreshing it was.” She continues, “Its sweetness combined with the subtle hints of espresso made the Iced Vanilla Latte stand out despite the simplicity of the drink.”

Stultz makes the purpose of her review clear later on. She was conducting some sort of comparison between the two cafés. Her response would have possibly been somewhat more appropriate if, hypothetically, Bellevue West had a café of its own and she had used it for the comparison. However, comparing a franchise that makes hundreds of thousands a year and has been around since 1988 to a simple fund-raiser internship café run by students is quite unfair.

After criticizing the drink she received—which is obviously much simpler than an Iced Vanilla Latte from  Scooter’s Café—she states, “This review is not intended to criticize the Beast Brew but rather to inspire small improvements that may enhance the quality of their drinks and boost funds raised for Bellevue East,” which ultimately makes her contradict herself. Critiquing a drink without any hope for it in the first place, and bashing it for the majority of the article, then stating that the purpose is to “boost funds raised for Bellevue East,” is quite humorous. I think most readers would agree.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However the comparison made here is like comparing the Tom Tom to The World-Herald. How can you compare things you probably know little about? How can you have an opinion on something you have never given a chance? And then proceed to make a public judgment after just one drink? Unethical. I think her response would have changed if her drink was made properly, I would know because I work at the Beast Brew. Not only was I disappointed with the choice of diction in this “review,” but it was also surprising that the structure of this review, “cough cough,” was supported.

-Junior Amia Stanfield, Beast Brew Crew Member