Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 8

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 8
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Community forum addresses police brutality
By CATHERINE MANTHORP
Assistant News Editor
Gwladys Boukpessi, ’18, remem-bers
walking down the street with
her brother many times during her
childhood. More often than not, those
walks ended with her calling for help
because her brother, who has epilep-sy,
was having another seizure.
She described her brother as sweet
and non-threatening.
Boukpessi said when she read the
Sept. 27 headlines about the police
shooting in El Cajon, California,
she thought about how her brother
could’ve been the black man who had
a mental illness and was shot and
killed by police. She said she also
remembers thinking she could’ve
been the man’s sister, who dialed
911 to call for help when her brother
was acting “erratically,” unknowing-ly
endangering both him and others.
If she didn’t feel like she could call
the police when her brother need-ed
help, Boukpessi asked, then who
could she call?
Boukpessi was among the stu-dents,
faculty and staff members
who attended the open forum on
protest and policing in the U.S. held
last Wednesday in Williams Hall.
Attendees lined the balcony above
the main meeting space and spilled
out of the packed room into the hall-way.
Stories of shootings and killings
of unarmed black civilians by police
officers have been continuously going
viral through the circulation of vid-eos
and hashtags, the most common
of which is the Black Lives Matter
movement.
Boukpessi said she attended the
forum because she thinks it’s import-ant
to have these kinds of conversa-tions,
especially when faculty mem-bers
are leading them. She said it
shows that people care, they’re aware
of the issues in the community and
they want to help bring about change.
James Peterson, an associate pro-fessor
of English and the director of
Chromium-6 levels in water not cause for concern
Political clubs
weigh in on
presidential
candidates
By NADINE ELSAYED
Multimedia Editor
By AUSTIN VITELLI
Managing Editor
Samuel Henry/B&W Staff
The remains of Bethlehem Steel are reflected on the Lehigh River on Friday from the eastern tip of Sand
Island Park. While some areas in the Lehigh Valley get their water from the river, the university gets it
from the City of Bethlehem.
Despite recent reports about chro-mium-
6 contamination in water sup-plies
across the nation, its amounts
are below a dangerous level in the
Lehigh Valley.
The Environmental Working
Group released data Sept. 20 from
a study on the contaminant, which
was made famous by the movie “Erin
Brockovich” in 2000. The study stat-ed
chromium-6 was found in tap
water affecting more than 200 mil-lion
Americans. The chemical was
found throughout water sources in
the Lehigh Valley.
The study notes possible side
effects of ingesting the carcinogen
can be skin rashes and cancer.
The report shows an interactive
map including breakdowns of chro-mium-
6 levels in parts per billion
from tests done from 2013 to 2015.
There are no environmental regu-lations
specifying maximum chro-mium-
6 levels except in California,
which is where the original outbreak
was discovered in 1993. The public
health goal is for the level to be
below 0.02 parts per billion, but the
regulation imposed a legal limit of
10 parts per billion, much higher
than the health goal.
Stephen Peters, an associate pro-fessor
of earth and environmental
science, said the two goals are often
different for contaminants. In gen-eral,
the legal limit looks at much
more than just health.
“I think you want to be careful not
to interpret (the public health goal)
as ‘Everybody’s got to be there or
we’re all in serious trouble,’” Peters
said. “For some things, the goal is
zero, and zero is an unrealistic con-centration
to ever meet. There’s just
no such thing as zero. So I think we
want to keep that in mind.”
While there is no legal limit for
chromium-6 levels in Pennsylvania,
data from the Lehigh Valley shows
the level would be well below the
10 parts per billion limit enacted in
California. For example, the aver-age
chromium-6 level in the City
of Bethlehem water system, which
is where Lehigh gets its water for
buildings on campus, was 0.066
parts per billion.
Peters said balancing the econom-ics
behind reaching a public health
goal likely contributes to the goal
being so much higher than the legal
limit in California.
“We make other choices every day
that probably carry a much high-er
risk than drinking the water,”
Peters said. “Car accidents, fried
food, too much salt, too much sugar,
smoking — all those things. There
are all of these other things that
See CHROMIUM Page 4
See POLICE Page 4
See CANDIDATES Page 3
The United States of America is
divided about the pending presiden-tial
election.
In CNN’s most recent national
poll, Hillary Clinton has 43 percent
support for the presidency, while
Donald Trump has 40 percent.
Where in those statistics, however,
are college students represented?
From talks of rescinding Trump’s
honorary degree to political chalkings
across campus, Lehigh is certainly
not apathetic to this year’s election.
Both Lehigh College Republicans
and College Democrats have taken
stances on the candidates.
Max Weiss, the president of Lehigh
College Republicans, said although
members of the club have different
opinions on Trump, the majority are
against his candidacy.
“To say that we endorse Trump as
a club would be completely wrong,”
he said, “but some of the club mem-bers
might like him because he’s the
Republican nominee. None of us like
Clinton, so they would back Trump
because it’s who the party chose as a
presidential candidate.”
While Weiss believes leaders in the
Republican party have tried working
with Trump to create a more cohe-sive
message to unite their constit-uency,
he still recognizes why other
universities’ College Republicans
won’t endorse the presidential can-didate.
For example, Harvard’s College
Republicans has refused to endorse
the GOP candidate for the first time
in 128 years, calling Trump “a threat
to the survival of the Republic.” Penn
State’s College Republicans chapter
has disavowed Trump as well.
“Trump is extremely flawed as a
candidate,” Weiss said. “Yes, he’s