The brothers of Iota Sigma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., hosted a political debate Wednesday at Shippensburg University’s Grove Forum.

The event, “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People,” was a debate between the College Democrat and the College Republican clubs. Aven Bittinger and Jaren Bittinger, of the Democrats, as well as Brandon Ferrance and Evan Schircliffe, from the Republicans, were participants in the debate.

SU criminal justice professor Stephanie Jirard was the host of the discussion topics.

The event started with Jirard explaining the importance of voting and being educated about the election. Jirard then went on to discuss the first topic, minimum wage.

“Does your candidate agree to raise minimum wage?” Jirard asked the debaters.

“Trump voiced support for a $10 minimum wage, but no higher,” Schircliffe said, followed by three minutes of questions from the audience.

The second topic was individual rights, and discussed the candidates’ positions on religious freedom, such as gay marriage. The Democrats were the first to respond with an exact quote from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about her stance on LGBT rights.

Gun control was the next topic, which sparked a lot of interest and questions within the audience. The question was about their candidates’ approaches to greater gun control.

Many people were curious about the candidates’ positions on gun control, such as how they are going to better secure the online purchases of guns and improve background checks.

The democrats responded with a statistic: 20–40 percent of people purchase guns without background checks and Clinton plans to fix that problem to ensure everyone gets a background check before purchasing a gun.

“I think this debate benefits students and gets them to realize the important topics we really need to think about during this election,” SU student Jackie Smith said.

“More students should take advantage of this opportunity and come to learn more about each candidate’s position,” SU student Maddison Rogers said. “I’m glad I came because it was an interesting way to learn additional information I didn’t know.”

The next topic dealt with the discussion of Black Lives Matter. They discussed how each candidate would deal with violence against citizens and police.

This topic also struck a lot of interest in the audience and led to a variety of questions.

“I think it’s really interesting to see other people’s reactions and opinions to certain topics because it gives more perspective on the election,” SU student Ciara Gallagher said.

“The debate hopefully teaches people that no matter who you support, you should still respect the other candidate,” Jirard said.

Some other topics in the debate included healthcare, education, taxes, immigration and climate. The debate ended with concluding statements from each political group stating how important it is for everyone to know the facts and to vote.

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