Jaffrey Grade School students argued for apple cider to be the official state beverage in Concord on Thursday, while rival elementary students from Gilford advocated milk.

Educators at Jaffrey are applauding the debate, but others say the bill is a waste of time and that it is teaching students poor lessons about government.

The Environment and Agriculture Committee, the body that heard the students’ testimony, discussed the bill in executive session Thursday.

The idea came to light last year as a result of The Great Mail Race, in which elementary school students from across the country wrote letters to one another to learn similarities and differences among the states. Three students in Sheila Nichols’ third-grade class at Jaffrey Grade School made a startling discovery.

“After learning that some states had official state beverages and that New Hampshire did not, Delaney Joaquin, Jesse Whicker and Shanleigh Bosse asked me what could be done about that,” Nichols said. “I explained to my students that they have a voice in our country and that they can use that voice to initiate positive change in our state and national government.”

The students wrote a letter to State Representative Bonnie Mitchell of Jaffrey, who brought forward a bill, initiated by the Jaffrey students, to make cider the official state beverage.

Later, students from Gilford Elementary School learned of the bill, and decided they wanted milk as the state beverage.

Students from both schools squared off against one another at Thursday’s hearing.

“Eighteen other states already have milk as their state drink,” Delaney Joaquin wrote in her testimony. “We would just be ‘following the herd’ if milk was our state drink. We have been ‘first in the nation’ to vote; why not be first in the nation to have apple cider as our state drink?”

For Jaffrey Grade School, Principal Susan Shaw-Sarles, seeing her students testifying before the committee was a proud experience.

“I found the more research I did, the more enthusiastic I have become about thinking apple cider is a great choice,” Shaw-Sarles said Wednesday. “The whole process is a wonderful lesson on how our government works and civic responsibility.”

The students had a good time with the process, describing the legislators as friendly.
“It was really cool going to Concord,” Delaney said. “I had never went there before.”

Delaney prepared her testimony with the help of her mother, who assisted as she researched apples and apple cider on the Internet. They discovered that daily consumption of cider can reduce the risk of heart disease and inhibit the growth of certain types of cancer cells.

Delaney said that though she had been fighting nervousness about speaking, she grew calmer as she continued.

Shanleigh held up signs as the others spoke. She said she was surprised to learn that New Hampshire did not have a state beverage.

“I like cider and it reminds me of the trees in the fall; fall is a season where you drink cider,” Shanleigh said Wednesday. “We have a lot of apple orchards here in New Hampshire.”

Shanleigh and Delaney both hope the Legislature chooses cider as the state beverage, but said a compromise might be the best solution.

Shanleigh said there might be problems if they choose milk. “I will probably never drink milk again,” she said.
Some residents are already weighing in. A poll at www.wmur.com has 63 percent of 522 participants in favor of cider with 37 percent for milk.

In online comments responding to articles about the debate in the Concord Monitor and the New Hampshire Union-Leader, readers have expressed disappointment, annoyance and outrage that the issue is being discussed at all.

An editorial in the New Hampshire Union Leader described the campaigns as teaching the wrong lesson about government.

Shaw-Sarles said Wednesday that the process of bringing a bill before the legislature is more meaningful for students than learning about government in a textbook in a classroom.

Regarding the debate’s relevance, Shaw-Sarles said state symbols are meaningful and benefit the state.

“My hope is naming apple cider as state drink would encourage the economy through encouraging people to buy from local farmers,” Shaw-Sarles said. “It is not frivolous in that a lot of our economy is based on tourism, a part of which is agro-tourism.”

,em.This story appears on Page 13 of the Feb. 11 Ledger-Transcript.