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July 19, 2016 – Allegheny College juniors Hayden Moyer of Sewickley, Pa., and Walter Stover of Charlotte, N.C., were members of one of five winning teams of the National 2016 Letters to an Elected Official competition sponsored by Project Pericles.

The Debating for Democracy (D4D)™ competition promotes civic engagement and effective advocacy skills among a wide range of students. Students from Periclean campuses send letters on critical public policy issues to elected officials throughout the United States. For the first time, students also submitted project proposals outlining how they would use their award. The five winning teams will each receive $500 to work on their issue during the 2016-17 academic year.

For the competition, Moyer and Stover wrote to Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) about online privacy and adapting Europe’s Right to be Forgotten in the United States. They plan to develop a website “promoting digital privacy rights and serving as a database” for cases supporting their endeavor.

“We picked the Right to be Forgotten as our topic because of its presence in modern society, with the huge boom of social media and the information age,” said Moyer, who is pursuing a major in economics and double minor in French and German. “There was also legislation regarding this issue passed recently in Europe, and now that debates are beginning to form here in the United States, we thought we would serve as trailblazers in our generation’s discussion of the topic.”

“I took an interest in this topic after the controversy over the National Security Agency’s surveillance program and Edward Snowden’s leaked information on the sheer scale of the NSA’s surveillance of the American public,” adds Stover, who is majoring in economics and minoring in Chinese studies. “It was clear to me then that Americans didn’t have the privacy that we assumed we did, and that privacy rights needed to be updated to protect us in a new era of ubiquitous information and connectivity.”

Other letters proposed innovative solutions on issues ranging from LGBTQ access and rights, extending Federal insurance to all agricultural crops, restricting local media sources from publishing the names of juveniles charged as adults for crimes, and expanding Medicaid coverage for mental health treatment and recovery support programs.

Since 2008, hundreds of teams from all Periclean colleges and universities have participated in the Letters to an Elected Official Competition. Every year, a panel of judges with significant legislative experience selects the winning letters written by teams of students from Periclean campuses.

About Project Pericles

Founded in 2001 by educational philanthropist Eugene M. Lang, Project Pericles is an organization that encourages and facilitates commitments by colleges and universities to include social responsibility and participatory citizenship as essential elements of their educational programs. Project Pericles works directly with its 30 member institutions, called Pericleans, as they individually and collaboratively develop model civic engagement programs in their classrooms, on the campuses, and in their communities.

Debating for Democracy (D4D)™ is a distinctive campus-based program that represents the mission of Project Pericles in action. Students acquire the tools and tactics they need to advance their issues and to get their messages across to elected officials, fellow students, community groups, and the media.

Photo: Moyer, left, and Stover.