News Briefs: JSU Unboxed, Aspiria and Trump’s Second Impeachment

East:

Throughout the pandemic, members of East’s Jewish Student Union have been keeping busy with JSU Unboxed, a program that distributes boxes containing at-home activities revolving around the Jewish religion every month.

National Conference of Synagogue Youth member Rabbi Nati Stern created the program as a way for Jewish students to stay connected to their religion even when not physically present and communicate with each other on a common ground of religion, involving some self-guided activities like creating bracelets or keychains.

Once a month, the presidents of the JSU groups in SMSD and the Blue Valley School District meet up via Zoom to assemble the boxes, then deliver them to JSU members’ houses.

The boxes are delivered with the activity revolving around the Jewish holiday that month. For example, January was based on Tu Bishvat, meaning “New Year of the Trees.” Some of the activity options in the box included growing parsley and ways to focus on self-improvement, like writing personal goals or designing rocks with motivational messages. It also came with conversation cards for igniting conversation about the holiday.

“How can you pass up just having a box delivered to your house at no charge?” Senior and co-president of East’s JSU Sarah O’Bryan said. “Another [reason] would be the pandemic. It’s just a nice thing to do — you have all the resources to complete your project before the meeting.”

According to O’Bryan, the creative freedom provided in each of the boxes creates a good atmosphere of religion and fun, and little effort has a big payout of engagement and connection to spirit and religion.

Local:

The office park formerly named Sprint Campus in Kansas City transitioned to Aspiria on Jan. 1 and will see massive renovations in the coming months. Occidental Management — a real estate company based in Wichita — bought the 207-acre area of land on the corner of 119th St. and Nall Ave. to pursue an ambitious attraction of office space, retail, waterfronts, restaurants and multi-family complexes.

These new additions would expand the existing developed property by 75%, with an additional 2.7 million square feet of offices, retail and multi-family housing, according to the Kansas City Star. 35% of the land will remain green space, according to bizjournals.com. Potential loss of greenery was concerning to Overland Park planning commissioners, but the Occidental Management assured they’ll preserve the green ery by planting more trees than required by code.

According to the Shawnee Mission Post, Sprint originally came up with the concept 30 years ago, but never fully finished the project’s 60 acres of open land.

Occidental Management bought the property with intentions of creating “a live, work, play destination — in the heart of Overland Park,” as stated by Aspiria’s website. 
“Aspiria encompasses the past, present and future,” chairman of Occidental Management Gary Oborny said in an interview with rejournals.com. “It’s a place where businesses aspire to be, and people are inspired to grow.”

National:

In an impeachment trial that lasted a mere five days, former President Donald Trump was acquitted from his charges on Feb. 13 regarding the Capitol insurrection that took place on Jan. 6, which resulted in five deaths. 

As stated by Politico, Donald Trump was brought forward and accused of inciting the insurrection and inspiring violence in the Capitol riots.

While seven Republican senators contributed to the majority guilty vote, Senate rules outline a two-thirds vote as a winning majority. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that Trump was in fact responsible for the insurrection, but is no longer in office — making him “not eligible for conviction.”

East students such as sophomore Bradley Walton followed the results of the impeachment and found the results unexpected. 

“I was pleasantly surprised,” Walton said. “I thought there would be around five [republicans who voted against Trump] with people like Sasse and Romney, but I’m glad to see more of them stepped up.”

Though Trump was not convicted of the charges Senate Democrats put forth, the trial will go down in history with the most senators to vote against a former president of their own party, with the subject being charged with counts of high crimes, according to AP News.

A key moment from the trial was a video shown by democrats on the second day. One clip included protestors calling to “hang” former Vice President Mike Pence for his commitment to a peaceful transition of power and opposition to the protest itself. Other clips showed protestors searching for Nancy Pelosi inside of her office and the phone video footage of a woman being shot dead as she was trying to enter the hallway that leads to the lobby of the House of Representatives.

According to Business Insider, some U.S. lawmakers are calling for the invocation of the 14th Amendment — preventing Trump from running again — and Trump’s legal issues could be taken further than just the impeachment, such as federal, state and local prosecutions from election violations.

“I’m concerned because he shouldn’t be let off lightly,” Walton said. “But I’m hopeful that Congress will be able to ban him from running for re-election.”