Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 10

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 10
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Lehigh considers alternatives to two-party system
John Rafferty,
Republican nominee
Josh Shapiro,
Democratic nominee
PA attorney general candidates talk college issues
By CATE PETERSON
Associate News Editor
By CATE PETERSON
Associate News Editor
John Rafferty is the Republican
nominee for attorney general. His
platform is “moving Pennsylvania
forward,” which includes institut-ing
school safety task forces and
a heroin strike force. The Brown
and White spoke to Rafferty on
Oct. 7 about the policies he would
institute as attorney general of
Pennsylvania.
Q: In your own words, what is
the role of the attorney general
and how does that role affect
college students?
A: The Office of Attorney General
was created by the legislature
back in the 1980s, and that clearly
spells out the Office of Attorney
General is the chief law enforce-ment
official for the commonwealth
of Pennsylvania and the chief law-yer
for the people of the common-wealth
of Pennsylvania. Within the
jurisdiction of the Office of Attorney
General is also the responsibility,
again, to cover jurisdiction with the
(district attorneys), and in some
instances the DAs of local counties
have the first instance to prose-cute
and then the attorney gen-eral
could back them up or take
the cases if they don’t want them.
Certain areas where the attorney
general does have some precedence
certainly on inter-county crimes,
on insurance fraud, on Medicaid
fraud — which is people stealing
taxpayer dollars — on political cor-ruption,
and it’s a chance to review
the workings of state agencies. And
also any information or any conduct
Josh Shapiro is the Democratic
nominee for the attorney general of
Pennsylvania. He is running on a
progressive platform, which includes
confronting campus sexual assault
and protecting students’ rights to
education. The Brown and White
spoke with Shapiro on Sept. 24 about
the policies he would institute as
attorney general.
Q: In your own words, what is
the role of the attorney general?
A: My role is to make sure our com-munities
are safe, your constitution-al
rights are protected and that the
criminal justice system works fairly
for everyone.
Q: (Shapiro has a six-point
plan to combat sexual assault on
college campuses. One aspect of
this plan is to develop a model
memorandum of understand-ing.)
Could you further explain
the model memorandum of
understanding?
A: What I want, if God forbid there
is a sexual assault or rape on campus
and the victim reports that, I want
to make sure that everyone who
could possibly be in that reporting
chain knows exactly what it is that
they are supposed to do. Oftentimes
a survivor of sexual assault doesn’t
know where to go. There’s a lot of
bureaucracy, and we need to make
sure they know exactly where to
go and once they get there that the
administrators or others they talk to
know exactly who they are supposed
to report to . . . And that model mem-
By KARLI WACHTEL
B&W Staff
The 2016 presidential election has
been anything but conventional.
The faded appeal of “traditional
candidates” is steering Americans
away from major party nominees
and driving them toward third-party
candidates such as Gary Johnson of
the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein
of the Green Party.
Polls demonstrate that Hillary
Clinton, the Democratic nominee,
and Donald Trump, Republican nom-inee,
are polling first and second,
respectively — but their third-party
opponents’ campaigns are still grab-bing
the attention of the voters who
are tired of typical politicians.
According to a poll released by
RealClearPolitics on Oct. 7, Hillary
Clinton is ahead with 44.1 percent
and Donald Trump trails at 40.9
percent. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein
remain behind at 6.5 percent and 2.3
percent, respectively.
Michael Miller, ’17, commented on
the polarization of the major political
parties.
“There is just a ton of party grid-lock,”
Miller said. “One side puts an
idea out and the other side is imme-diately
opposed to it, so that is driv-ing
people away from the two-party
system.”
See SHAPIRO Page 2 See RAFFERTY Page 3
See PARTIES Page 4
Courtesy of the Josh Shapiro campaign
Josh Shapiro is the Democratic nominee
for attorney general of Pennsylvania. His
platform includes sexual assault reform and
protecting education rights.
Courtesy of the John Rafferty campaign
John Rafferty is the Republican nominee
for attorney general of Pennsylvania. His
plaform includes school safety and drug
reform.
Data from RealClearPolitics
Graphic by Anna Simoneau