Montana
High school students cook up 5-star meals at 2024 Montana ProStart invitational
BOZEMAN — Caeser salad, blackened shrimp, steak with root vegetables, and tanghulu—that’s what the Laurel High School team of culinary students cooked up for the ProStart culinary arts competition at Montana State University.
“We’re cooking a three-course meal in an hour. And we don’t have any electricity. So we only have camping stoves, water, and ice,” says Raylea Brown, a Junior at Laurel High School competing in the Montana ProStart competition.
The three-course meal is only the first challenge these competitors face. The 2024 Montana ProStart Invitational was held Thursday in Hannon Hall on the MSU campus. The Gallatin College Culinary Arts Program hosted eight high schools from across the state to show off their skills in various culinary and restaurateur challenges.
But what is ProStart and how does this program produce such talented chefs?
“ProStart is a two-year curriculum based in culinary arts and culinary management to give students some industry experience while they’re still in high school,” said Tracey Eatherton, the state director of Montana FCCLA and ProStart.
Being a part of the ProStart curriculum means these high-schoolers are cooking at the same level as some five-star restaurant chefs. But this competition is not only judged on cooking skills.
“The judging actually involves professionals from the field, and they’re in different areas. We have some looking at teamwork, some looking at safety and sanitation, there’s some over there looking at plating,” says Tracey.
The chefs also created a business pitch for a restaurant, which included everything from the menu to pricing to how they will market and operate the business.
“Everybody knows restaurant work can be hard. Culinary work can be hard; there’s a lot more avenues for people to find their niche in culinary. But it’s still a lot of hours, so these kids are making a conscious decision to want to be chefs,” Mike Dean, director of the culinary arts program for Gallatin College told me.
He expressed how excited he is by what these high-schoolers can do in the kitchen.
“It’s the next generation. It absolutely is,” said Dean.
And although Belgrade High came out on top and will be heading to the ProStart nationals in Baltimore, every student got the chance to show off their passion for being a Chef.
“It kinda runs in the family. My grandma cooks on both sides of the family. So it was an interest of mine,” said Hannah Lackman, a senior from the Laurel High team.
Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) is facing yet another lawsuit over allegations of unlicensed sampling — only this time, it’s centered on a video clip of the rapper’s infamous 2013 fight with paparazzi.
In a case filed Wednesday (July 15) in Los Angeles federal court, the celebrity news agency Bauer-Griffin claims that Ye, French Montana (Karim Kharbouch) and others used audio from the headline-grabbing incident in “Where They At,” released in 2024 off French’s Mac & Cheese 5.
The May 2013 video, which also features a pregnant Kim Kardashian, shows West charging at a photographer outside a Los Angeles restaurant and shouting “don’t take no photos” and a string of profanities: “All of you m*therf*ckers stop it, man!”
The clip appears prominently in the intro to Montana’s song — a use that the lawsuit calls “blatant and willful” copyright infringement.
“Given Mr. Ye’s history of numerous confrontations with paparazzi, the video was highly newsworthy,” the agency’s lawyers write in legal documents obtained and first reported by Billboard. “Listeners immediately recognized the audio sample that begins the infringing record as being copied from the video.”
Ye has been sued over a dozen times for allegedly using unlicensed samples and interpolations in his music, including a high-profile battle with Donna Summer. In May, he lost a jury trial over using an uncleared sample in an early version of the Grammy-winning “Hurricane” from Donda. He had testified at trial that he’s “very generous” about giving credit and compensation when it’s due, but that “a lot of people try to take advantage of me.”
In Wednesday’s complaint, Bauer-Griffin says the creators of “Where They At” showed no such respect to its rights in the video of the paparazzi incident, using it despite being well aware that sound recordings must be licensed when any amount is directly sampled into a song.
“In the music industry, copyrights are prevalent and well understood,” lawyers for the agency write. “Every defendant knew that they needed to have but did not have permission to use the audio sample.”
Reps for both stars did not immediately return requests for comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants producers Dem Jointz (Dwayne Abernathy Jr.) and BoogzDaBeast (Jahmal Gwin), as well Gamma, the label that released the song, and its distribution unit Vydia.
The confrontation at issue in Wednesday’s lawsuit was one of two high-profile scuffles with paparazzi that year for the rapper, who was then still known as Kanye West. Two months later, he clashed with photographer Daniel Ramos outside of LAX, resulting in a civil assault lawsuit that the star eventually settled two years later on the eve of trial.
As many celebrities have learned over the years, simply appearing in a photo or video does not give someone any legal rights to it. Ownership of such material is always retained by the creator — an inconvenient fact that has sparked lawsuits against Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa.
It’s unclear who filmed the May 2013 incident, which happened outside a Beverly Hills restaurant minutes after the star had also been filmed accidentally banging his head into a signpost while trying to avoid other photographers. But the rights to the footage have been owned by Bauer-Griffin from the beginning: When TMZ first posted it at the time, it came with a watermark crediting the agency.
“The infringing record has been widely distributed on various streaming platforms, in flagrant violation of plaintiff’s exclusive rights under copyright laws,” Bauer-Griffin’s attorneys write. “Plaintiff brings these claims to vindicate those rights.”
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