Why Search for Noon at 2 PM?

In March I went to San Antonio with a group of fellow students to help asylum seekers navigate the application process. The experience was incredibly powerful, putting the trials and tribulations of my life, of all our lives, in stark perspective. The asylum seekers came from all over the globe, many from Central America and West Africa, with nothing except fear from their past and hope for a better future in America. However, before they could fight for that future, they were held in a prison while they struggled to fill out the necessary paperwork and waited for judicial hearings. The plight of the people in detention in San Antonio changed my perspective on our immigration policies with regard to asylum seekers and a good description of the situation that they face deserves more attention. With this in mind, what follows is a link to the accurate description of the situation written by my classmate Brianna Rennix, who was with me in San An...

Civilian gun violence and excessive use of force by police against citizens are inextricably linked. America has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world as well as the highest death rate for police officers among similarly-situated countries. A plurality of officer deaths are due to gun violence against officers, which naturally leads police to self-preserve when on-duty. To reduce the excessive use of force by police we must tackle the ubiquity of weapons in civilian society and reduce the chance that a weapon will be used against an officer. Before getting into the argument, let me start by limiting the scope of this writing. I am not writing about the link between police violence and race, which seems clear to me, has statistical backing, [1] and should have more observational verification but for our nation’s embarrassingly sparse record of police activity. [2] I am also not discounting the benefits that additional training for police might confer. Additionally,...

The recent hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, prompt reflection on American infrastructure and development policy. One major federal disaster relief and infrastructure program is the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which subsidizes development in flood-prone areas. The NFIP is bad policy, for a variety of reasons, and should be changed to phase-in actuarially sound policies during the next few decades. Hurricane Harvey’s destruction has yet to be fully documented. Hurricane Irma just ripped through Puerto Rico and threatens Florida with more devastation. These powerful storms, as a group, are not unexpected. Annual hurricanes have a long history along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. [1] Modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey, conducted in 2009, found that “natural resource managers of coastal ecosystems should expect at least 1 major hurricane of Category 3 or greater to strike the north-central Gulf coast every 20 years.” [2] The modifier ‘at least’ is very important. We should...

Tariffs are common political fodder. Candidate Donald Trump called for punitive tariffs on goods from China and Mexico. [1] Both Trump and Candidate Hillary Clinton attacked the Trans-Pacific Partnership, [2] a free trade agreement negotiated during President Barack Obama’s presidency that, if ratified, would have united 12 Pacific Rim countries, accounting for 40% of world trade, under common trade rules and (almost) no tariffs. [3]                 Tariffs are also the core of trade negotiations. For decades, trade negotiators pursued the policy of tariffication, whereby non-tariff trade barriers were converted to tariffs. Changing qualitative national policies into quantitative import taxes allowed negotiators to barter ‘apples for apples’ in trade negotiations. While it is doubtful that decades of work towards tariffication actually reduced the prevalence of non-tariff barriers, [4] there has been a co...