BLUE STAR MOTHERS
WINTER SPORTS CAPSULES
BEST HOLIDAY COFFEE Ranking the Starbucks holiday drink menu
Staff member Jennifer Wilson is a member of a program that helps soldiers
SPOTLIGHT Pg. 6
Four new teams have begun play for their season
SPORTS Page 8
A&E Page 7
THE PEPPER BOX RITENOUR HIGH SCHOOL
ISSUE 4, VOLUME 97
9100 ST. CHARLES ROCK ROAD, ST. LOUIS, MO 63114
DECEMBER 2019
Diversity in student body leads to holiday diversity Students throughout Ritenour share their experiences celebrating their winter holidays CHRIS CAMPOS Pepper Box Staff The Ritenour School District is especially known for its diversity, and that diversity leads to a new twist during the holiday season. While holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa generally get the most attention, Ritenour students partake in other traditions, holidays, and festivities around this time of the year. Junior Kasurla Hougbedji’s religion actually allows her to abstain from holiday activities. “I am proud to say that I am a Jehovah’s Witness. I love my religion and everything that comes along with it, even all the practices that come along with it. We do not have a holiday season, and as a matter of fact, we do not celebrate anything,” Hougbedji said. The New World
Translation of the Holy Scriptures has no documentation of any kind of celebrations that were attended. Due to the practices described in the Bible used by Jehovah’s Witnesses, there is no reason for any holiday season. On the other hand, the Lunar New Year celebrations are unique in their very own way due to the flexible time period it falls on each year. The celebration revolves around the Chinese calendar and lasts from six to seven days in a row. No clear depiction of the actual origination of the Lunar New Year holiday has been confirmed, but many seem to believe it has been passed down from the Shang Dynasty. Junior Annie Le celebrates this holiday with her family every year. “It’s the time of the year where my family and I all come together to attend the
many festivities thrown for the holiday at the temple, casino, and our homes,” Le said. “Many of the middleaged people hand out envelopes filled with dollars to the younger children and older adults, as it is part of our tradition.” Not only is it a time for people deep clean their home; but it is also a time to slow down, reflect on their life, and take time to heal. It is recognized as a very uplifting and positive week. Diwali is another winter holiday celebrated by Ritenour students. Diwali celebrants come together with Diyas (oil lamps), to light and place them around their homes. Diwali is one of the holidays that has no set time of the year, it all depends on the cycle of the moon and falls in either October or November. Sophomore Pearljit Dayal celebrates Diwali as a Sikh. “Our day is pretty normal
Photo courtesy: Pearljit Dayal From left to right, sophomore Pearljit Dayal,senior Mehakjit Dayal and middle school student Sumanjit Dayal celebrate Diwali. The Dayal family celebrates this holiday every winter.
until the evening, where we then get ready in our new flashy clothes to attend the festivities at Gurdwara, my temple. Every family then lights two Diyas until the whole area is filled,” Dayal
said. As a Sikh, Dayal celebrates Diwali to commemorate when the sixth Guru was released from captivity from The Mughal Empire.
Blockaded bridge in Breckenridge Hills affects families Residents have voiced their concerns with an unresolved blockade on a widely used bridge KAYLYN RIGGS Pepper Box Staff Reporters are calling it a war and the residents are calling it obnoxious. The Breckenridge Hills bridge just off of the Rock Road and Isolda, torn and destroyed for years, sitting unfixed, finally closed back in 2017. That is a total of three years with a street being closed, not including the rough 2015 and 2016 where the road was randomly closed without communication between residents and city officials.
Photo by: Kaylyn Riggs A resident of Breckenridge Hills placed this sign near the blockaded bridge.
IN THIS ISSUE
Many things have contributed to the destruction of the bridge that used to stand. Floods and countless vehicles traveling over the continuously deteriorating bridge eventually led to the end of it. It did not help that the thought of fixing it was constantly ignored and pushed to the back of the mayor’s desk. The conflict started in 2015 when countless, disastrous floods building off the creek running under the bridge finally tore the small holes in the concrete into large potholes the size of tires, leaving them virtually unavoidable. The concrete that cars had to drive over was basically gone. Cars drove less than five miles per hour over the bridge to avoid any kind of damage, and this added minutes to the users’ routes, angering many of the tense residents and causing them to complain. “I never get to see my friends during school, so breakfast is the only time I ever get to see them. Avoiding the bridge added minutes onto the commute, so now I only get a few minutes before class,” sophomore Jamie Sadler said. The mayor of Breckenridge Hills at the time, Jack DEALING WITH PROBLEMS AT THE HOLIDAYS PAGE 2
Shewsbury, decided to allow cars to continue driving over the bridge, as there were no signs of industrial damage confirmed after a thorough investigation took place. However, with the bridge rapidly disintegrated, it left a screaming demand to fix it that did not fall on deaf ears. Shewsbury proposed the county get help from its neighbor, Woodson Terrace, because the residents that lived there more commonly used the bridge, as it was on the very edge of the Breckenridge Hills border that led into the residential area of Woodson Terrace. The Mayor of Woodson Terrace, Lawerence Besmer, declined the idea, as it was outside of his responsibility and he said the city just simply did not have enough money to help cover the repairs. The bridge was closed as neither counties had enough money to fix the bridge, with an estimate of $400,000 needed. Temporarily, a sign reading “no through” and concrete blockers popped up stopping people from traveling down the street. The counties fought, and the residents, who were angered by the lack of response from the mayors, just began to move
the blockades for quicker travel. New Breckenridge Hills Mayor Mary Aman even told KMOX4 that they [Breckenridge Hills] needed help footing the bill because their residents barely utilize it and it was just too expensive to spend money on something their residents do not even use. Citizens of the surrounding counties sharing the bridge were excited and thankful when construction workers drove towards the bridge early 2017, two years into the bridge being closed, because they assumed someone would finally be fixing it. However, that did not happen. The workers spent a whole day laying down thick layers of gravel to temporarily “fix” the problem. No one predicted the complete annihilation of the bridge as drivers ground the gravel into the already dying street. “I really hate it. I just want to get home at the end of a long day, but now I have to take a huge detour when my house is right in front of the bridge,” Woodson Terrace resident Laura Wells said. The annoyance of the broken bridge led to one resident planting a sign
ADMITTING WHEN YOU ARE WRONG
THE START OF A NEW ‘20S
BLUE STAR MOTHERS
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reading “Broken Bridge Hills” giving the other annoyed residents a quick laugh as they slowly crawled over the bridge’s rough gravel and potholes. The complete lack of a proposal to fix the bridge led to all emergency services, such as firefighters, police officers and ambulances to discontinue using the bridge as a mode of transport because of the potential danger. Even Ritenour District buses from the elementary schools, middle schools and high schools have stopped using the bridge, leading to huge changes in multiple routes. “There are two buses in the district that used to cross the Isolda bridge during their AM and PM runs. Four runs were negatively impacted by the closing of the Isolda bridge. This adds about four minutes to each of the routes, but does not make the buses late for school,” Ritenour Director of Transportation Bryan Sanker said. One day in the future, Mayors Aman and Besmer may sit down and discuss the repair of the bridge so that they complete their duty of listening to their residents. Until that day, the residents wait.
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