Local

CTE Budget cuts

By Adam Bronson

On Sept. 16 during a staff meeting the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Director, Mark Madison, revealed that all out of state travel funding would be cut. They warned about this change in May of last year before students could make class changes relating to this. This makes it so if any club would like to do anything that costs money out of state they won’t get any funding from CTE as they had in the past .

This cut in theory would affect most major clubs like HOSA, Journalism, and TSA making it hard for them to go to any event out of state involving those clubs because of the lack of funding, making it so that if they wanted to get some kind of funding they would have to find their own way of acquiring it with some help from the school. These trips are important to major clubs because it gives students the opportunity to learn, meet people who share common interests, compete and win awards. Without these trips these clubs lose the opportunity to help their club members grow, and the club grow as a whole. In HOSA specifically because of these cuts, if a student hasn’t taken a CTE class relating to HOSA they cannot go on an out of state trip, even if the student pays their own way.

This is also an ongoing problem as time goes on more and more cuts will continue to happen if there aren’t any changes.

Shooting at Evergreen High School

Mika Hamre

Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado–just 20 miles from the location of the 1999 Columbine shooting–was met with the sound of gunshots at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 10, not even two weeks after the first day of school. The shooter, now identified as 16-year-old student of the high school, Desmond Holly, used a revolver-style handgun to fire approximately 20 rounds, critically injuring two students in the process. The incident concluded with a self-inflicted gun-shot to the head after confrontation with a deputy at gunpoint. Holly is reported by investigators to have had a complex motive, though his search history and forum discussions suggest that he had a general desire for violence. Further investigations so far have found that Holly had reports of concerning behavior three days before the shooting through the Safe2Tell program. However, the Sheriff’s Office of Jefferson County claims that the individual had no prior reports or complaints involving the shooter. The two students who were shot were released from the hospital in early October, expected to make a good recovery in the following months. Since the shooting, the Colorado community has once again made efforts to support the affected parties; alumni and current students held protests against gun violence while fund-raisers were established to support the injured students financially.

National

Nepal instates new government

By Robert Jensen

The Nepali government was recently overthrown, ending a series of protests across the nation that began Sept. 8. They went through Sept. 10. The revolt was led primarily by Generation Z (Gen Z) youth after a ban on most social media platforms was put in place on Sept. 4. This disrupted daily functions for Nepali citizens, from marketing to contacting distant families.

The former Nepali government had been known to be corrupt for several decades, with a significant class divide between the government elites and the lower class workers. Social media helped people realize the differences between these two worlds. This is a major reason the government attempted to suppress it. These factors helped build class tensions that erupted in the revolt caused by the social media ban.

In addition, the revolts started due to the frequency of civilian deaths, primarily caused by police forces and political elites. In particular, over the course of the protests from Sept. 8 to 10, police forces killed 22 protesters, generating significant public contempt. The revolt occurred over the course of roughly 48 hours and occurred simultaneously in multiple major cities, although it began primarily in Kathmandu, according to the BBC.

BTS returns

By Claire Bollen

The K-pop boy group, BTS, has officially been fully released from military service as of June 21, 2025, with member Suga being the last of seven. After two years of waiting, ARMY, their fandom, is overjoyed to see them make their return and excited for any plans that are in the works behind the scenes for a comeback.

Military service, which BTS among other K-pop Idols have undergone, is mandatory in South Korea. From ages 18 through around 30, the government requires men to serve in the military for their country, however that may look. On average, it takes around two years to complete, which is just how long it took BTS.

Their military service was first announced in late 2022 by Big Hit Music, their label company. It was met with heartbreak, yet subdued hope for the outcome of their inevitable years away. And now, it seems ARMY won’t have to wait much longer. Recently, it was announced that BTS is putting together a new album, set to be released by the spring of 2026. It will be their first full group album since 2022, and is going to be accompanied and advertised through a world tour, the first since 2019.

D4vd allegations

By Yarinet Hernandez Mendoza & Kalliope Whalen-Robinson

People often say that “art reflects the artist”, and many hope that this isn’t true for the singer D4vd. With the news and many social media platforms, the singer has become suspicious in the recent death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, after parts of her decomposed body were found in the front trunk of his Tesla in early September. 

Although D4vd was never publicly arrested or named a suspect, many of his fans suspect him; matching tattoos with Rivas, actresses looking like her in his music videos. He also has a violent alter ego named Itami in every music video, who is always covered in blood. He also up until Riva’s death had an open casket, flowers and a notepad for fans to write to the “deceased” during his most recent tour. The lyrics to his songs, especially the most recent unreleased song of the artist: “Celeste”, along with other incriminating lyrics in many other songs like: “Romantic Homicide”: “in the back of my mind you died” and “I’m sick of waiting patiently,” also in “Here With Me:” I don’t care how long it takes,” and “What Are You Waiting For:” “I get if you want to wait…” The common themes being in most of his songs and these songs is, they are all about waiting/ being tired of waiting. The question is for what? Marriage, her turning 18? Many questions arise. Claims have been made that the artist was seen near Riva’s home a couple of days before going missing. Which may potentially be true, if the allegations of Rivas’s secret relationship with the artist were to be proved true as well. Backing up the relationship allegations is that of X user JPR, claiming that Celeste Rivas was not the only one who interacted with the artist, but Celeste Herrera, too. JPR theorizes that D4vd lost contact with Rivas, and Herrera was the uncanny lookalike replacement.  

With the emergence of the new Celeste, new theories quickly started pouring into social media. One of which suggested that Herrera was the one who murdered Rivas. Older theories still circumvent the media, such that Rivas was pregnant, and that was the ultimate reason for her decomposed body. None of this can be proved at the moment, and if it were, it is unlikely that authorities would release this to the public anytime soon. [What cannot be denied is that  D4vd had been in contact with both Celeste’s, as photos and videos of Rivas and Herrera are up on the internet, both had some sort of connection with the singer.]

At the moment, it is unknown who was driving the Tesla about a month before Celeste went missing, but the information remains unknown to the public. There is still a lot to uncover from this crime: Who is the person behind all of this? And one of the biggest questions many may ask–Why?