Sen. Pippy Meets with Student Republicans

Pennsylvania Sen. John Pippy (R-37th District) told a group of students at last night that it's never too early to get involved with politics.

"If you don't get engaged now you might not like which direction things are going when you're older," he said.

RMU's College Republicans organization played host to the event, which included a question-and-answer session for students. William Jones, vice-president for the RMU chapter of the organization, said Pippy's remarks during the evening impressed him.

"It shows he actually cares about the people in his district and about college students," Jones said. "Since I've been here, he's the first [legislator] to come here and speak."

Pippy briefly touched upon Marcellus Shale drilling at the event, saying he opposes efforts to tax the growing industry.

"We need to make sure that we're not a high-cost state to do business," Pippy said. "I think what will happen is there will end up being some kind of local impact fee [for drilling companies]; I think that's fair."

Pippy said that while drastic cuts in funding to public education will challenge the commonwealth’s school districts, "the overall basic education subsidy probably won't see much movement.

"The idea that a teacher should have to buy his own materials is frustrating on so many levels. That is a failure of the system," he said. "At some point we've got to start saying where is the money going? Then we need to change our funding stream at the state level, but we just don't have the money to fill the gap."