Musk, for his part, has denied the Journal’s reporting, writing on the platform formerly known as Twitter: “After that one puff with Rogan, I agreed, at NASA’s request, to do three years of random drug testing. Not even trace quantities were found of any drugs or alcohol.” I will leave evaluating the accuracy of that second sentence as an exercise for the reader.

One of my best friends from home is an Army Ranger. He gets regularly tested for illegal drug use, as do all government employees and contractors. Elon Musk is, among other things, a government contractor. SpaceX’s Dragon rocket is the only NASA-approved vehicle for taking astronauts to the International Space Station and has received billions in government contracts. Starlink, a network of satellites deployed using SpaceX rockets, is by far the dominant player in the field; its units already make up over half of all active satellites, and Musk plans to put thousands more into orbit. 

Given his alleged drug habits, pattern of openly flouting federal securities law and business interests in China, the Washington Post Editorial Board wrote that “government agencies should at the very least consider whether it is wise to renew their contracts or sign on to others.” 

Ukraine, for instance, relies on Starlink for its defense effort against Russia’s invasion. According to a recent biography, Musk deactivated Starlink service near Crimea in September of 2021 to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the Russian navy, because he did not personally approve of the operation. He later confirmed this on Twitter. The New York Times reported that Musk has restricted where Starlink is available in Ukraine depending on how battle lines shift and his personal assessment of Ukrainian tactics. 

More importantly, Elon Musk has enormous business interests in China. My former boss, Matt Yglesias, has written at length about this — but I’ll give you the short version. Tesla is building more and more of its cars in China and its new factory in Shanghai is its largest in the world, expected to produce over half of its cars worldwide. Most of Musk’s cars are sold in China, and  Tesla is exempt from the normal requirement that companies selling cars in the Chinese market must be joint-owned by a Chinese firm. 

As Tesla’s ties to China have deepened, Musk’s publicly stated views on the Chinese government have morphed from critical to effusive — praising China’s infrastructure and COVID-19 response and advocating for incorporating Taiwan into a “special administrative zone,” similar to Hong Kong. We all know how well that turned out. 

As Matt points out, none of this is surprising at all. The Chinese market is very large and very lucrative. Western firms want to get a piece of it, and the price of doing business is staying mum about the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. So the NBA, Apple, Mercedes and John Cena toe the CCP line because business is business. The only difference between them and Musk is that none of them controls infrastructure critical to American defense policy. 

Musk’s China ties are already shaping the way he runs Starlink. In an interview with the Financial Times, he “says Beijing sought assurances that he would not sell Starlink in China.” The New York Times has reported that Taiwan is reluctant to use Starlink because of “tremendous concerns” over Musk’s business interests in China. 

Which brings me back to the Post’s editorial. They are of course completely correct about the drugs and the erratic behavior and Musk’s business interests. But their solution is lacking. The United States government should do more than review its contracts — it should nationalize Starlink. Ketamine habit aside, Elon Musk has a massive conflict of interest and cannot be trusted to put the national interest over his own bottom line. Uncle Sam can and should resolve this conflict by buying Starlink, for a fair price.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, so the question of how exactly to go about with nationalization must be left for another day. But I do know a thing or two about politics, and given his recent rightward turn, if the Biden administration took my advice, Musk would undoubtedly cry political persecution. “Clearly, the White House is targeting me for my political views and public criticisms of the president!” Conservatives’ belief in a “two-tiered justice system” that holds Democrats to a lower standard would be bolstered, which would further erode public trust in the rule of law. But a Republican administration would be less vulnerable on that front. So if Donald Trump wins this fall, he should do more than talk the talk on China — he should walk the walk and nationalize Starlink.

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One of the things you learn in ECON 115 is how to think on the margin. For any good or service — a Granny Smith apple, let’s say — the value of the first one is greater than the value of the second, which is greater than the value of the third and so on. That first apple is great; the second is nice; and by the third, you’re feeling a bit full. Each subsequent apple matters less and less to you. And the same goes for money. 

In “Utilitarianism,” the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argues for “the Greatest Happiness Principle,” the idea that we should aim to maximize happiness and minimize pain when making moral decisions. When it comes to big-picture politics, I’ve considered myself a utilitarian since I was first introduced to the concept in middle-school debate. To me, it’s common sense. It is simply not right for some people to be spending $120,000 per year on college admissions consultants while there are people sleeping on the New Haven Green. 

If we assume that utility is the natural log of income — which is to say that it diminishes on the margin — we can mathematically prove that up to a certain point, redistribution is a positive sum for aggregate utility. The first $1,000 you transfer from Steve Schwarzman to a poor person increases the latter’s utility by far more than it lowers the former’s. The next transfer hurts Schwarzman a little bit more and benefits the poor person a little less than the first one. Up to a certain point, before perfect material equality, the marginal cost to Schwarzman equals the marginal benefit to the poor person, and any further redistribution would reduce overall utility. 

That was a very long-winded way of saying I favor higher taxes on the wealthy and more economic redistribution than we currently have in the United States. Joe Biden’s policies have and would continue to make the economy more egalitarian. Donald Trump’s agenda would lead to higher prices, higher interest rates and higher debt. 

Without getting into the weeds of monetary and fiscal policy, suffice it to say that while the labor market remains hot and inflation has come down part way, higher rates are putting strain on the banking system, increasing mortgage costs and making government borrowing more expensive. These are real, tricky problems, and Biden’s plans aren’t perfect. But he has an actual proposal to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade — including $400 billion in 2025 — which would ease price pressures and give the Federal Reserve more room to lower rates. That’s at least a solid start.

Trump’s plan, on the other hand, is to cut corporate taxes, blow up the deficit, partially fill the hole by slapping a 10% tariff on all imports and force Jay Powell to raise rates. That’s not going to lower the cost of living — it’s going to make the problem worse. 

There is more to life than dollars and cents. Take bodily autonomy. “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it,” is what Trump has said about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade. The official GOP platform calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, and top Republicans are calling for federal regulators to pull the abortion pill from the market. Joe Biden has promised to codify the Roe standard into federal law if he’s re-elected with a House and Senate majority. 

That’s the mainstream liberal case for Biden: if you think there should be fewer restrictions on abortions, more restrictions on guns and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, then you should vote for him. But even if you lean right on those issues, I think you should still vote for Biden because Donald Trump is not a normal Republican. He attempted to overturn the results of a free and fair election. That sort of thing is deadly serious. Either country comes before party, or we have no country at all.

So, to the reader: if you are registered to vote in a swing state, you have a constitutional duty to vote for Joe Biden. Do not cast a blank ballot or vote for a third-party candidate: every vote that doesn’t go to the president is one more vote for Trump.

The elephant in the room is the Israel-Palestine conflict. I know many of my classmates on the left are unsatisfied by Biden’s response. And there are valid criticisms of it. But a Trump re-election would make things worse, not better, for Palestinians. Trump wants to expel pro-Palestine members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez; reverse Biden’s efforts to restrain the Israeli government’s military actions; deport foreign students who attend pro-Palestine protests and once again ban Muslims from entering the United states. 

And if you think that voting for a third party would push the Democrats to be more progressive, think again. In a first-past-the-post electoral system, you only need a plurality to win; the goal is to come in first by raw votes. Through that lens, a Democrat voting for Jill Stein or staying home counts as -1, while a Republican crossing party lines counts for +2. And, according to Democratic political consultant David Shor, it’s about twice as costly to get a nonvoter to turn out as it is to persuade a voter to switch sides. Thus a candidate running to Biden’s left incentivizes him to tack right. 

Look, for many people, this election is a choice between an awful candidate and an uninspiring one. I get it. This isn’t my ideal match up either. But the choice is not complicated: Joe Biden, whatever his flaws, will uphold our republican form of government. Donald Trump wants to be a dictator “on day one.”

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh.@yale.edu.

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Aaron Sibarium ’18, a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon and a former News Opinion editor, uncovered 50 instances of alleged plagiarism in seven of Gay’s 17 published articles, including her dissertation, primarily in her acknowledgement and literature review sections. Supporters of Gay have claimed that Sibarium, who made his name doing investigative journalism from “a conservative point of view,” was carrying out a politically-motivated hit-job. An internal Harvard investigation found “instances of inadequate citation” and “duplicative language without appropriate attribution” but concluded that Gay did not commit plagiarism. I would strongly encourage readers to look at the side-by-side comparisons between Gay’s work and the passages she allegedly lifted, which can be found in Sibarium’s piece, and decide for themselves. 

In my view, the plagiarism question is open-and-shut. One missing citation is a mistake; 50 is a pattern. If I was caught doing this, I would be expelled, and rightfully so. University presidents must be held to the same standard as students when it comes to academic honesty. If they are caught breaking the rules, then they should be sacked. 

But there’s more behind the plagiarism allegations. On Dec. 5, Gay and the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania were called to testify before Congress. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, asked: “Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?” Gay responded: “It can be, depending on the context.” 

Three things happened as a result. First: prominent, wealthy donors like hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman strongly condemned Gay’s words and the broader response to antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. Second: Harvard faced a 17 percent drop in early action applications. (This likely has more to do with the broader response to antisemitism than Gay’s testimony, since the latter took place a month after the early action deadline.) Third: Sibarium published his series of articles alleging plagiarism in Gay’s academic work after receiving an anonymous tip. 

Ackman is correct that there seems to be a double-standard at play here. Similarly inflammatory rhetoric applied to Black or LGBTQ+ students would not be tolerated the way it has been in this context. Elite universities issued strongly worded statements in favor of Black Lives Matter protests and against various injustices while being more measured when it comes to Israel-Palestine. 

Yes, this issue is perhaps more complicated and nuanced. But the problem with a university taking political stands on relatively non-controversial issues is that once it has shown it is willing to back a particular cause, people begin to expect a stance on other causes. The university loses the ability to say that while faculty are more than welcome to express their views, the administration will not be commenting on this matter, thank you very much. 

One last thing: Gay’s supporters argue that she has been targeted because of her race and gender. There is likely an element of truth to that. It is also not a coincidence that she was picked in the leadup to the Students for Fair Admissions decision, in which the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Harvard and struck down the use of race-based affirmative action. Acquaintances at Harvard told me that it was an open secret at the time that the Corporation wanted the next president to be a woman of color. And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with promoting diversity in high offices; both Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan pledged to nominate women to fill Supreme Court vacancies. 

But these promises, whether explicit or implicit, inevitably lead to accusations that someone is a diversity hire who got their position because of identity rather than merit. This is why it is imperative to make sure that people from underrepresented backgrounds don’t have skeletons in their closets — certainly not 50 of them. 

Was Sibarium’s investigation motivated purely by good faith? Probably not. But that’s no excuse for plagiarism. 

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh.@yale.edu. 

Update, Jan. 31: This article has been amended to properly attribute background sourcing.

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Last week, I spoke with a friend who was leaning toward Ramaswamy. He asked how accurate the polls tend to be in Iowa, so let’s take a look. 

In the Hawkeye State, J. Ann Selzer’s polls are the gold standard. In 2020, most polls showed a close presidential race in Iowa: on Election Day, the FiveThirtyEight polling average had Trump up by 1.3 points. Selzer’s final survey had Trump up by 8 points; he ended up winning the state by 8.2 points. The final FiveThirtyEight average in 2016 had Trump up by 3.4 in Iowa; Seltzer’s final poll had him up by 7 points; he ended up winning the state by 9.4 points. You get the idea: she’s good at her job. The final Des Moines Register/Selzer poll this cycle, released on Saturday, had Trump at 48 percent, Haley at 20 percent, DeSantis at 16 percent and Ramaswamy at 8 percent.

But those were general elections. Caucuses, due to their unique — by which I mean stupid — mechanics and lower turnout, are more vulnerable to polling error, and most pollsters in Iowa aren’t as accurate as Selzer. So the question is: Could polling errors have shocked the nation on Tuesday night and propelled Haley, DeSantis or Ramaswamy to a surprise victory? Probably not. 

In 2000, Selzer’s final poll nailed George W. Bush’s final vote share in Iowa but significantly underestimated Steve Forbes. Bush, the frontrunner, went on to easily win the Republican nomination; John McCain came in second nationally.

Selzer had a great year in 2008, nailing Mike Huckabee’s win, as well as Mitt Romney’s second-place finish. McCain went on to win the nomination, with Romney coming in second place nationally.

In the 2012 Republican caucuses, Selzer was very accurate — except for Rick Santorum. The final Des Moines Register survey had Santorum in fourth with 15 percent; He ended up edging out Romney to win the caucus. Romney beat Santorum, who dropped out after Super Tuesday, for the nomination.

In 2016, the last contested GOP caucus, Selzer’s final poll was close to the results for most candidates. But slightly overestimating Trump’s vote share coupled with undershooting Ted Cruz’s meant the survey projected the wrong overall winner. As you well know, Trump went on to win the nomination. 

What’s the upshot of all of this? First, J. Ann Selzer is a pretty good pollster. Second, when it comes to the Iowa Republican caucuses, polls are generally accurate, and usually — but not always — give you a good idea of the candidates’ vote shares. True, it is possible for the polls to underestimate candidates, sometimes by a lot. And these misses can project the wrong winner. But by and large, polling will give you a good idea of who’s likely to finish where. 

Let’s take the largest historical polling miss in Iowa — plus or minus 10 points — and apply it to this year’s caucuses, assuming the polls overestimated Trump and underestimated his opponents: Trump might have been at around 44 percent, Haley at 27 percent, DeSantis at 26 percent and Ramaswamy at 16 percent. That’s still a comfortable victory. And remember, we’re assuming the largest historical polling error in this hypothetical, all in the anti-Trump direction. When the results are all counted, the error this year will likely be smaller, and not directionally uniform. 

Even if we make the most generous assumptions about polling error in Iowa, Trump’s opponents were almost certainly, as Chris Christie remarked last week, “smoked.” A second-place finish in Iowa and Christie dropping out of the race might’ve been enough to propel Haley to a surprise victory in New Hampshire. But almost half of Haley’s supporters in Iowa plan to vote for Biden in the general, and her net favorability rating with likely Republican caucus-goers has collapsed over the past few months, resulting in her third place finish last night. If Haley wins New Hampshire, that will be because lots of independents and Democrats end up voting in the Republican primary. I’ll change my party registration and vote for her on Super Tuesday, but it won’t be enough for her to beat Trump. 

The GOP primary is for all intents and purposes over. So is the Democratic primary. Neither ever really began. Joe Biden is an incumbent president running for renomination; Trump functionally is, too. I would bet a large sum of money on the general election being a rematch. Seriously — I will give any interested readers 10:1 odds on Biden and Trump being their parties’ respective nominees. If the election was held today, Trump would probably win. But it’s a long time until November and a lot could change. So buckle up, buttercup.

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh.@yale.edu. 

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The data, going back to the 2010-11 academic year, show a rise in the share of A’s and A-’s given out at Yale College from 67 percent to 79 percent in 2022-23; the share of A’s only rising from 40 percent to 58 percent; and the average GPA rising from 3.6 to 3.7. This throws cold water on the idea that the high share of A’s simply indicates that Yale students are smart and talented and hard-working: any change in the composition of the student body is far too small to explain the observed rise in average marks over the last decade. The report also contains the share of A’s and A-’s disaggregated by subject, ranging from 52 percent in Economics to 92 percent in History of Science and History of Medicine courses. 

There are a couple of conclusions one can draw from these figures. As an econ bro, I now have a numerical justification for my inflated ego; as a Directed Studies (80 percent A-’s or higher) alumnus, I am even more certain of the god-awful quality of my fall semester literature essays. More seriously, the numbers confirm what everyone already knows. Yale, like other elite colleges, is in the grips of a nasty bout of grade inflation. 

At this point, it’s helpful to step back and consider: what is the purpose of college grades? I posed this question to Maya Jasanoff, a history professor at Harvard who is, conveniently, my aunt. She replied: “diagnostic and pedagogical.” 

Professor Jasanoff thinks of grades as having three purposes. Grades can function as a signal for employers and graduate school admissions officers. They can function as a pedagogical tool, showing students where they are doing well and where they need to improve. They can serve as a disciplinary measure by providing students with an incentive to do their coursework. To her, the second function is the most important.

Over the phone, she told me that “really what we should be doing is providing qualitative feedback to help students learn and grades are — or should be — a shorthand for this.” Ideally, these functions would be separated from the rest.  

To understand why grade inflation happens, consider a fourth function of grades: as a status symbol or social identity marker. If you’re a student at Harvard or Yale or some other elite college, you were probably a good student in high school. If you’re anything like me, that entails a confidence in your own intellectual and academic abilities, bound up with an insecurity that you might not be smart enough to make the cut. When you opened your admission letter, you felt like all those hours spent studying had paid off and that your status as a smart person had been confirmed. Even if every Yale student was in the top decile of academic ability in high school, only 10 percent can be in the top decile at Yale. But when you’ve tied a great deal of your identity to being a top student, that can be psychologically difficult to accept. This creates an additional incentive for students to press instructors to award higher grades, while teaching evaluations and a desire to keep course enrollments up can incentivize professors and teaching fellows to accede to do so. 

If we accept that grading as a signaling or disciplinary mechanism should be separated from qualitative feedback, then how should we go about that? One suggestion is to give students two sets of grades: an inflated one for their transcript, and one that reflects the true quality of their work. Part of the reason grade inflation is a problem is that the highest possible grade is an A; if people could earn A+’s or A++’s, then GPAs wouldn’t cluster around the top of the distribution. Uncapping grades is of course a somewhat fanciful suggestion, but bringing back class ranks would have a similar effect: accurately showing students where they are in relation to their peers.  

All these options come with tradeoffs and deserve a nuanced debate. But until some reform scheme is settled on, Ivy League schools must embrace transparency. Before professor Ray Fair, authorized by Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis, sent the faculty report to the News, Yale had not published this sort of data in over ten years. If the University published it regularly, then students, employers, and graduate schools could decide the real value of that ‘A’ for themselves.

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh.@yale.edu.

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I’m from Cambridge, Massachusetts, born and raised. I’ve spent my share of time around Harvard. When I was a baby, I used to help my aunt Lynn make her syllabi, one at a time, waddling back and forth between pressing the copy button and grabbing the freshly printed page, while my mother gave her lectures. The Museum of Natural History was one of my favorite field trip spots in middle school. I used to cut through the yard as a teenager to get from the train station in Harvard Square to Cambridge Rindge and Latin. 

All of this is to say that I feel a certain familiarity with Harvard, even though I ended up going to a much better school. In some ways, I feel like I know the place better than many Harvard students. Cambridge is my hometown, I know the square like the back of my hand, and Felipe’s is an old classic to me. But there’s also a certain feeling of separation, of looking in from the outside. I don’t go to Harvard, after all. I’ve walked through the yard, but I haven’t lived in the dorms. I know Cambridge, and I’ve spent time around Harvard, but not in Harvard.

Last year, when I was at the game in Cambridge, I remember looking around Harvard Stadium and thinking about how many times I’d been in those stands. When I rowed, we used to run stadiums there. After hours, I would climb the fence with my best friends, and we would discuss current events and drink strictly nonalcoholic beverages. Those moments felt a bit like glancing in from the outside. We borrowed the stadium to work out or hang out, but it wasn’t our stadium. But at the game, I felt like it was finally my stadium. There I was, with my classmates, taking part in one of those Ivy League rituals, now as a made man. And truthfully, a not-so-small part of me felt like the stadium belonged to me more than it did to anyone else in the stands. Because I was back home, I knew the town and now had the gown to match. 

I didn’t end up getting into Harvard, and I’m happy about that. No offense, but our parties, dining halls, dormitories, etc. (I could go on but there is a word limit here) are better. Jokes aside, I’m grateful that I got to attend college more than ten minutes away from my parents. (Sorry Mama and Baba!) I’m glad that I get to discover New Haven with my classmates. But it makes me wonder how natives of New Haven feel about “Yale spots.” What does Good Nature Market mean to them? What about Toad’s? Trinity? 

To me, what makes them “Yale spots” is that I have fond memories of going to them. But I’ve only been here for a year and some change, and I’ll only be here for a grand total of four years. So really, who am I to decide what a place in New Haven is? That said, when my friend visits for the game, I’ll be sure to show her one place that absolutely is a Yale spot: Pierson College. Sorry, Maya, but we wash Mather House. 

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh.@yale.edu.

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Days before his defenestration, McCarthy backtracked on the agreement he had made with Joe Biden during the summer’s debt ceiling crisis, putting forward a budget bill in September which included deep cuts to government spending and tighter border policies to appease the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. The Senate countered with a bipartisan spending package that maintained existing funding levels and included additional aid for Ukraine; McCarthy ultimately agreed to a 45-day stopgap measure, pegged at existing spending levels but without the additional aid to Ukraine. The short-term funding bill ultimately passed the House with 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting for it and was signed into law.  

That, to his fellow Republicans, was McCarthy’s crime. Hardliners like Gaetz argued that McCarthy had broken his word to the Freedom Caucus by not insisting on spending cuts, even if that meant a government shutdown. By passing a bill with so many Democratic votes, McCarthy, according to Andy Biggs of Arizona, was “maintain[ing] the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer spending levels and policies” and “allowed the D.C. Uniparty to win again.” 

House Democrats, too, felt that the speaker was untrustworthy. After Jan. 6, McCarthy first condemned Trump’s role in the insurrection, then flew down to Mar-a-Lago to make nice. The speaker reneged on the spending deal he cut with Biden over the summer, then gave Democrats an hour to read the 71-page stopgap bill before voting on it. He opened an impeachment inquiry, despite Republican congressmen admitting that they do not have evidence of President Biden committing high crimes or misdemeanors. Still, Democrats were reportedly open to saving the speaker’s bacon — but McCarthy refused to offer any concessions in exchange for their votes. 

But what’s truly ironic is that there was a time, not so long ago, when Kevin McCarthy was the right-winger going up against the Republican establishment. In 2015, when John Boehner of Ohio stepped down as speaker after facing a rebellion from the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy made a bid for the top job — as the right-wing faction’s preferred candidate. He ended up dropping out after making a Benghazi-related gaffe, saying presciently, “I am not that guy.” The job ended up going to Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. 

The hardliners in the caucus favor extreme economic policies — as does the rest of the party. The House GOP’s opening budget proposal, from the spring, called for drastic cuts to government spending: 45 percent from foreign aid; 43 percent from housing programs; 50 percent from the FBI’s counterintelligence program; eliminating Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which provides subsidized healthcare to the poor; and adding work requirements to SNAP. 

These extreme stances are a drag at the ballot box. Research by Split Ticket, an elections analysis blog, has found that the most right-wing members of the Freedom Caucus run about 7.3 percentage points behind the average Republican candidate. If extremism costs votes, then why doesn’t the party make more of an effort to nominate moderates? 

“Republicans have created an incentive structure where their primary voters tend to reward the most extreme candidates, who in turn are seen as crazy by the electorate and have a track record of underperforming,” Armin Thomas ’21, one of the founders of Split Ticket, told me. 

Of course, there is one exception to this rule: Donald Trump. Because he is so far ahead in the 2024 primary, and so beloved by the Republican base, Trump can afford to take on a more moderate posture in anticipation of the general election. For example, despite having appointed three of the six justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump has publicly criticized Ron DeSantis’s ’01 six-week abortion ban as a “terrible mistake,” saying it’s “probably better” to leave the issue to the states. 

But we cannot forget that if Trump wins back the White House, it will be the same hard-right committee chairs in Congress who dictate policy. 

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh@yale.edu.

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Since 1984, Congress has conditioned federal highway funds on states maintaining a legal minimum drinking age of 21. All 50 states have done so since, including Connecticut. And yet it is not particularly hard to imbibe while underage at Yale: you just go to a frat party, or a formal. It’s not as if the administration is unaware of this. During first year orientation, Yale Chief of Police Anthony Campbell told me and the rest of my class that if a friend drinks too much, we should call Yale Dispatch instead of 911 because the former will not get anyone into legal trouble. 

Why does Yale basically turn a blind eye to underage drinking? Ostensibly, harm reduction. Alcohol is not good for you. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, no amount of alcohol is safe to drink or beneficial to your health. Drinking is much more common among the well-off: 79 percent of Americans earning $100,000 per year or more drink compared to only 53 percent of those earning $40,000 or less; 74 percent of college graduates drink compared to only 56 percent of those who did not go to college. 

Once you control for socioeconomic status, the perceived health benefit of moderate alcohol consumption disappears. Booze is bad for your liver, your heart and your blood pressure. The extra calories can cause you to put on weight. It makes people more violent. The CDC estimates that drinking kills 140,000 people annually in America — that’s 380 per day — with 10,000 of those deaths coming from drunk driving alone. 

The downsides of drinking are real, but it’s also great fun! And while you can quantify the increased health risks and excess deaths caused by drunkenness, you cannot calculate the joy of cracking a cold one with the boys. You can’t put a number on the memories you make with your classmates, or the new friends you make at a party. 

You can think of that aspect of drinking — the memories and the fun — as a positive externality that gets ignored if you restrict yourself to a quantitative view of the world. And I think that ignoring these positive externalities has something to do with the much-discussed “crisis of loneliness,” which the Surgeon General recently released a report on. The causes are admittedly unclear. Certainly, the pandemic played a role. Nick Kristoff, the New York Times columnist, has argued that wealth itself is the cause — that greater material abundance allows people to isolate themselves from one another. Perhaps social media is to blame. (Others disagree.) I think that part of the problem is the attitude towards risk that I described. 

And I think that attitude has caused people to underrate the unquantifiable upsides of drinking — including, yes, of the underage variety. In Europe, it is much easier to drink when underage and I think that contributes to a more vibrant social environment for young people. Now, teenage binge drinking is much higher across the pond, it’s just not as risky because there’s more public transit and fewer guns. I don’t think the European model would scale if applied in the United States, and I don’t think we should lower the drinking age. 

But policy isn’t everything. Social attitudes matter, too. Yale’s logic is that if drinking is going to happen anyways, given that this is a college environment, it’s better to try and mitigate the downsides than engage in a futile attempt to scrub it out. That’s all well and good and you’re not going to hear me complaining about it. In fact, I think that more parents should adopt that logic. That’s not to say that they should encourage underage drinking, or ignore the risks posed by alcohol. Those risks deserve to be weighed, but so do the unquantifiable benefits of risky behavior. If the positive externalities were priced in, I think society would be somewhat more favorably inclined towards letting young people drink — socially, that is. That would be a less lonely and more vibrant society. And, I think, a healthier one.

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh@yale.edu.

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Elicker has been mayor since 2020, when he beat incumbent mayor Toni Harp ARC ’78 in the Democratic primary in 2019. This year, Elicker — who received degrees from the School of the Environment and School of Management in 2010 — faces Liam Brennan, Hartford’s Inspector General, in the Democratic primary. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2007, Brennan worked in the Department of Justice in the nation’s capital and later as a legal aid attorney in New Haven.

Broadly speaking, Elicker and Brennan agree on the issues. On crime, both candidates agree that officers should only arrest drug dealers and not users, though Brennan claims that under Elicker’s tenure, police have still been making arrests for possession. Both believe that steps should be taken to get illegal guns off the street, with Elicker highlighting his administration’s record and Brennan proposing the use of subpoena power to cut off the “gun pipeline.” 

Both candidates agree that climate change is a pressing issue. At a recent forum hosted by the Yale Law School and Yale College Democrats on Thursday, Brennan argued that the city ought to declare a climate emergency and invoke emergency powers; Elicker responded that such a declaration would be purely symbolic, and that current state laws do not allow for non-COVID-related emergency powers. 

Elicker and Brennan have similar stances on housing and education. I asked both candidates at the forum if they supported loosening zoning laws. Both answered in the affirmative, though Elicker placed more rhetorical emphasis on requiring a high percentage of affordable units in new buildings, while Brennan focused on expanding supply regardless of housing type. I asked what each of them would do to address post-pandemic learning loss, and Elicker talked about his administration’s efforts to expand tutoring and early childhood education to address longer-running learning gaps. Brennan echoed similar sentiments. 

On city finances, both candidates agreed that Yale should contribute higher payments in lieu of taxes to New Haven, and that in the long-run, state laws should be amended to allow towns to charge sales and income taxes, rather than relying on property taxes alone. 

Finally, I asked the two candidates what the biggest difference between the two of them as mayor would be. Elicker said experience arguing that his two terms as mayor make him better prepared to enact his policy agenda, and more cognizant of the political realities that might constrain him. For example, while Elicker supported eliminating regulatory parking minimums, there weren’t enough votes on the Board of Alders for it. Brennan argued that he would be more willing to use the powers of the office to pass his agenda, even if it came at a political cost. 

And that contrast is why I’m voting for Mayor Elicker. Throughout the forum, and over the past few days I’ve spent reading both of their campaign platforms, I’ve found very few substantive differences between the two contenders. The largest gap is attitudinal: Elicker favors a more cautious, incremental, half-a-loaf is better than nothing approach, while Brennan is willing to take greater political risks to advance similar policy goals. But precisely because their policy goals are almost identical, I’m inclined to back the candidate who has more experience dealing with the political realities on the ground to get things done. 

Elicker noted at the forum that should he lose the Democratic nomination he would still run in the general election under the Working Families Party banner. I haven’t been able to find any credible polling on the primary, so I can’t say whether Elicker or Brennan is favored. On paper, the winner of the primary looks like a very strong contender to enter city hall, given that New Haven is overwhelmingly Democratic (Joe Biden won 84 percent of the vote in 2020). A third candidate, Tom Goldenberg, is already running in the general election as an independent, with the backing of the local Republican Party. Should Elicker win the primary, I’ll vote for him over Goldenberg in November. But if Brennan wins and the election becomes a de facto Democratic-vs.-WFP election, I’ll likely still back Elicker, for the same reason I’m voting for him the primary: I believe he’s more likely to actually enact the policies that both he and Brennan favor.

The bottom line is this: the two candidates have extremely similar views on essentially every issue that has come up in the primary — but I believe that Elicker’s experience gives him a greater chance of actually enacting that agenda. Regardless of who you’re for, if you’re registered to vote in New Haven, go and make your voice heard on Tuesday. 

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh@yale.edu 

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Fortunately, state governments have stepped in. In February, Minnesota governor Tim Walz signed a bill guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch to all students in the state, regardless of family income. Currently, the federal government pays for free or reduced-price meals for students but limits who qualifies; the Minnesota law spends an additional $388 million to cover the cost of free lunches for those who don’t qualify for the federal program. 

In August, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, signed a one-year budget bill that spends $47 million to provide free school breakfasts to all public school students in the state. Massachusetts, my home state, just approved a one-year budget that will spend $172 million to provide free, universal school meals to all public K-12 students. At the time of writing, six other states — California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico and Vermont — have enacted similar policies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Making school lunch free is just a no-brainer. Research shows that poor nutrition can harm students’ academic performance, and that universal free school meals improve math scores in school districts where few students qualify for means-tested free meals while reducing suspensions for white male students by 17 percent. Universality has other benefits. It lowers administrative costs. It saves busy parents time spent on filling out paperwork to receive the benefits they deserve and reduces social stigma. 

Here in Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont is using $16 million of federal COVID-19 relief money to fund a temporary extension of universal free school meals through June 2024. But the governor is unclear on whether or not he will push to make free school meals permanent, telling The Connecticut Mirror that his administration will “see how successful this is and see what the budget looks like next year.”

It is true that we are in a macroeconomic environment where fiscal austerity is warranted: for the first time in the 21st century, aggregate demand is too high rather than too weak. But Connecticut can still afford to make school meals free for all — permanently. 

Last fiscal year, the state budget came in at a total of $41.2 billion ($20.7 billion came out of the state’s general fund, with the rest coming from federal transfers). The cost of extending free school meals through the current academic year comes out to less than 0.04 percent of that total. And the Nutmeg State is one of the richest in the United States. Again, per the Urban Institute, Connecticut’s per capita income was just under $85,000 in 2022, compared to a national average of just over $65,000, and the median household income for 2021 was just over $83,000 (ranking sixth among the states) compared to the national average of about $69,000. 

There’s no excuse for children to go hungry in the classroom in a state this wealthy, especially since the cost of keeping school meals free amounts to a rounding error in the budget math. If lawmakers are searching for “pay-fors,” I have a couple of suggestions. Sin taxes on substances with negative social externalities — booze, cigarettes, and weed — could be raised. The state might loosen zoning laws and reap the reward of higher property tax revenue. Or it could raise taxes on the rich. 

Figuring out the financing details for this program is a job for policymakers in Hartford. What you, the reader, can do is write your state legislators. End Hunger Connecticut, an advocacy organization, has a handy tool that you can use to contact them and a bill that would make free meals permanent. If you’re a Yalie registered to vote in New Haven, like me, then your state senator is Martin Looney, the majority leader — an office that carries a great deal of influence in state-level policymaking. 

I encourage you to write to Gov. Lamont and Majority Leader Looney, and to ask them to pass legislation making school lunches free. I voted for both last fall, and I hope they do the right thing for Connecticut’s children. 

MILAN SINGH is a sophomore in Pierson College. His column, “All politics is national,” runs fortnightly. Contact him at milan.singh@yale.edu

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