Renovation and expansion approved
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Conestoga High School, Berwyn, PA 19312
Volume 70 No. 3
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Parents organize christmas Market
Sophomore runs half-marathon page 10
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Spoke.news
Seniors compete in redistricting contest Kate Phillips Staff Reporter
Alex Gurski/The SPOKE
Consciously consuming: Senior Amelia Thibault serves a customer a cappucino at Starbucks. On Thanksgiving night, chaos and rushing customers characterized her Starbucks shift.
consumer culture By Ananya Kulkarni and Hyunjin Lee
Sports Editor & Co-T/E Life Editor The Spoke surveyed ten homerooms regarding their holiday shopping habits, separated by grade level and chosen randomly. In total, The Spoke collected 198 responses. The day after Thanksgiving, sophomore Emily Burgess woke up at around 5 a.m. to shop with her friend Bridget Davidson and sister Leigh at the KOP mall.
“We got coffee and food and arrived at KOP at 5:50. We shopped until 8, but we were so tired. After going to more stores to buy clothes and presents for our families, we got picked up at 10 and I went right to bed,” Burgess said. According to CNBC, this Black Friday marked the biggest sales day ever recorded and second largest day in sales for Cyber Monday, with Black Friday shoppers spending $7.4 billion just online. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, Black Friday drew more online sales than Cyber Monday this year, with overall sales coming up by 16% from last year over the 5-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. At Conesto-
Examining the rise of consumerism during the holiday season
ga, 44% of surveyed students shopped on Black Friday this year and 47% shopped on Cyber Monday. The consumer focus in our society today has driven more and more businesses and stores to market holiday products earlier, even as early as before Thanksgiving. According to KOP mall’s customer service center, KOP began putting up the holiday decorations well before Halloween, to ensure that all the decorations could be up in time for the holiday shopping season. The earlier appearances of holiday items and decorations in stores can be described by the term, “Christmas Creep,” which is a merchandising phenomenon
first introduced in the mid1980s. Like Burgess, junior Yasmeen Tayea also decided to take a Black Friday shopping trip at the KOP mall on Nov. 29. “Around 2 p.m., I stopped by the Apple store to look for a new phone, but it was so crowded and everyone seemed so busy,” Tayea said. While Tayea experienced one end of the spectrum of congested malls on Black Friday, senior Amelia Thibault was on the other side of the register as she spent her Thanksgiving night, now commonly considered as the beginning of Black Friday, working at Starbucks. “A lot of mornings at Starbucks are pretty chaotic but
on Black Friday, it was a lot of families, so every order was more than one drink and people were more in a hurry so they weren’t as patient as they usually are,” Thibault said. “But it was a mixed bag on both ends of the spectrum, some people being really nice or people being a little rude.” Congested malls and long lines are just a part of the consumer culture that has worked its way into the holiday season in recent years. The gift-giving tradition has reached new heights.
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When senior Mihir Dhamankar first learned about politics and gerrymandering in 6th grade, he was instantly interested. Later, during the 2016 election, senior Kevin Wu became fascinated with politics. By using their interests to successfully create a map redistricting Pennsylvania to better combat gerrymandering, Dhamankar and Wu became first runners-up for the youth section of the state’s Eastern region in a contest run by Draw the Lines PA, a civic education and involvement initiative for Pennsylvanians. In the spring of their junior year, students in David Anderson’s AP Government class were presented with the task of completing a civil engagement project. After seeing the link for the Draw the Lines PA competition on Schoology, Dhamankar thought it was “the perfect topic” and teamed up with Wu to enter the competition. Little did they know, Dhamankar would soon be in Harrisburg (Wu was not able to attend) with Sen. Andy Dinniman, receiving certificates, prize money and recognition. The original motive behind the civic engagement project is to give students the opportunity to explore diverse ideas and engage in the political process. “I think that student exposure to ideas that are different than their own is extremely important during high school. One of the things we talk about in all of government classes is this idea of political socialization and how people come to the beliefs and ideas that they have,” Anderson said. Dhamankar began by creating an online survey asking Pennsylvanians about what map features -- population, topography, political party -- they thought were most important. Over 160 people from 66 different counties completed the survey, and their answers heavily influenced the final map. “My goal was to use these parameters to influence our decision making,” Dhamankar said. Throughout the process, Dhamankar and Wu used an open-source redistricting software called Auto Redistrict, which allowed them to set pa-
rameters and estimate boundaries, which Wu later manually adjusted. They also used the software’s website, which had useful information on redistricting algorithms. Finally, they used the contest’s website, which included resources with information on how to properly draw a map as well as examples of winning maps from past years. “Making sure to keep to natural geographic boundaries is tough, particularly in keeping districts competitive and counties mostly unruptured,” Wu said. “The most difficult aspect was definitely dealing with cities — the original concentric regions we had were poorly implemented and eventually replaced with more aesthetic, longer regions.” The issue of gerrymandering (manipulating the boundaries of an election vote map to favor one party over another) provided the main fuel for inspiration and rationale for Dhamankar and Wu. “Voting is the most effective solution for change, and we need fair elections in order for the will of the people to be exercised. We both realized the most important things to optimize were the requirements of contiguousness and equality of population,” Dhamankar wrote in his submission. Wu expressed a similar sentiment regarding gerrymandering. “Gerrymandering is one of the most important issues of representation in politics,” Wu said. “I think politics has given me increased perspective on how life works — the ideas (in politics) involving power and power dynamics exist everywhere we look.” Their passion and hard work paid off, and the two finished as first runners-up in the Eastern region’s youth division of the contest along with two other participants. Roughly a hundred adults and youths from the central, eastern and western regions of Pennsylvania competed. Dhamankar described his reaction as simply “surprised.” Wu felt rewarded, emphasizing the importance of understanding gerrymandering. “Although the project was inspired by a contest, I think it’s important not to place a focus on the competition itself, but rather on the process and what can be learned from it,” Wu said.
Evan Lu/The SPOKE
Melinda Xu/The SPOKE
Drawing the lines: Seniors Mihir Dhamankar and Kevin Wu examine the map they created for Draw the Lines PA, a statewide redistricting contest.
School board moves to acquire 13 acres by eminent domain Tiffany He and Evan Lu Co-Managing Editor and Staff Reporter
Doyle-McDonnell Property
Conestoga High School Design by Tiffany He
Location, location, location: The T/E Board of School Directors unanimously voted on Nov. 14 to pursue the Doyle-McDonnell nursery property through the use of eminent domain. The property is depicted in the above graphic.
As the T/E School District faces increased student enrollment every year, the T/E Board of School Directors unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the beginning of an eminent domain action to acquire the neighboring Doyle-McDonnell nursery property. The 13-acre tree nursery, located adjacent to Conestoga on Cassatt Road, reached a $5 million sale agreement with the home construction company Toll Brothers to develop the property into 85 residential townhouse units. Due to the land’s close proximity to the school, the district has shown long-term interest going back to 2002 in purchasing the property. “The new space would provide the opportunity to meet
additional student needs in a further phase of expansion. One likely scenario is the construction of athletic fields,” superintendent Richard Gusick said. After learning of the owner’s decision to sell the nursery, the district first tried and failed to negotiate a deal with Toll Brothers, then used eminent domain as a last resort to obtain the property. This right allows government entities, such as public school districts, to take or appropriate private property for public use with fair compensation. At a special meeting held on Nov. 14, the school board directors, nursery owners, district leadership and residents of the Tredyffrin and Easttown Townships discussed their views on the use of eminent domain to acquire the plot of land. An appraiser for the district recently estimated the fair market price of the property to be $2.13 million, while a November 2018
appraisal provided by the nursery valued the property at $2.92 million. According to district solicitor Ken Roos, the difference between the two appraisals comes down to differing views on the cost of potential development on the land. “The distinguishing factor between the owner’s $2.9 million appraisal (and) the district’s $2.125 million appraisal is really just the difference of opinion by the appraisers on the cost of developing and building the properties to the point where they could be sold,” Roos said. Christine McDonnell, daughter of nursery owner Terry McDonnell, hopes the district will increase its current offer. “All my life, I’ve wanted to follow my father’s footsteps. He would drag me through the city of Philadelphia and point out trees that they planted from our
nursery here in Berwyn, and I knew I wanted to do that,” Christine McDonnell said. “There’s a value to this land, and I just ask that (the district) pays the fair price.” At the special meeting, many residents seem to agree that the district should be a higher priority than Toll Brothers when selling the land. Former school board member Pete Motel recognizes the importance of this acquisition for the district. “(The district is) wrestling with increasing enrollment, and also, the availability of land for school use is diminishing,” Motel said. “Back at the last major expansion and renovation of the school in 2002, we discussed possibly acquiring the nursery, but we were told at that point it was a going concern, and we dropped it. We did, however, say that if this ever changed
hands, the school district should be the No. 1 buyer. It’s a matter of determining what the fair price is.” The district plans to move into further negotiations to reach a deal with the McDonnell nursery. “These are difficult decisions that we have to make. And one of the things I will say is, I’ve always been careful about using good discernment and good judgment,” school board president Reverend Scott Dorsey said. “We have to be also in consideration of our whole community, and do what’s in the best interest of everyone. But at the same time, I will look straight into the eyes of the owners and the family and say, my hope is that we can come to some fair market conclusion that will be good for everyone, including all the citizens of our community.”