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The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Rent Inflation
No full textM.P.P.This paper attempts to investigate COVID's impact on the current economy by using the student housing market as an example. The main hypothesis is that given substantial anecdotes, we expect monthly rent amount to be more pronounced for students in 2021 than in 2019 even when accounted for inflation. In addition, three scope conditions will be explored as supplements: prices are higher in smaller locales, rental pricing differs according to nationality, and prices will also be higher in prominent metropolitan areas, but due to reasons different from the smaller localities. Using American Housing Survey datasets from 2019 and 2021, numerous empirical regressions are conducted using both linear and log-linear models. The results generally confer with the hypothesis and scope condition suppositions in that students in 2021 do indeed face steeper rent prices, non-citizen students face greater rental burdens than domestic students, and highly-populated MSAs on the East Coast experienced the largest price upticks. Policies aimed at mitigating college affordability so that the pool of entering college students stay as wide as possible are recommended to curb societal inequality that can be exacerbated by the educational system
Impasse and Options: The Challenges of Engaging with Afghanistan under the Taliban Rule
No full textThe resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces in August 2021 has significantly altered the geopolitical and social landscapes of the region. This policy report delves into the complexities of
engaging with the Taliban-led Afghanistan and provides actionable recommendations for policymakers to navigate this challenging terrain. With the return of the Taliban to power, a new chapter in Afghanistan’s history has begun, characterized by both renewed uncertainty and the potential for recalibrated international relationships.
The withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan marked the end of America’s longest war, symbolized by the fall of Kabul. This transition was underpinned by the Doha Agreement of 2020, which was intended to pave the way for peace through intra-Afghan negotiations. However, the agreement failed to achieve lasting stability. Instead, it contributed to the factors that caused the eventual abrupt collapse of the Afghan Islamic Republic. The regional and international response to these developments has been mixed, with some countries viewing the withdrawal with varying levels of positivity. In contrast, others remain cautious about the Taliban’s ability to govern effectively and inclusively.
The international community now faces the dilemma of how to engage with the Taliban without legitimizing their rule or endorsing their policies, particularly edicts that restrict education, employment, and freedom of movement for Afghan women. This situation is further complicated by Afghanistan’s severe socioeconomic challenges, regional security concerns, and the ensuing humanitarian crisis
Reconnecting What? A Social Equity Critique of the Reconnecting Communities Program
No full textThe federal Reconnecting Communities Program (RCP) was released in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). This legislation is a rare admission by the Federal government of the disproportionate negative impacts of interstate highway development.1 This paper utilizes historical and current Census data, data provided by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the National Historical Geospatial Information System (NHGIS) to measure impacts of highway removal on two case studies: Atlanta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas. This research finds that the RCP, in its current state, is ineffective as a method of mitigating the divisive impacts of highways due to jurisdictional issues, the lack of population at selected project sites, and large discrepancies in funding. This paper argues that the RCP is unlikely to realize its intention to “reconnect” communities, and that the program perpetuates a long history of short-sighted solutions to social equity problems at the federal level
The Impact of Social Media Use on Youth Mental Health Outcomes in the United States
No full textM.P.P.Concerns about youth mental health in the United States have been rising for the past decade and reached an especially alarming rate during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Roughly a decade ago in 2013, a majority of Americans started owning smartphones; with smartphone ownership came increased screen time and social media use. Social media use is now nearly ubiquitous among teenagers, making it commonplace to spend more time interacting with peers virtually than in real life. This makes it easy to become stuck in loops of depression, anxiety, and compulsive use. Using the publicly available Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this paper addresses the effect of social media use on youth mental health outcomes using cross-sectional regression analysis to understand how mental health outcomes in the previous 30 days change with increased screen time. This study finds as screen time increases, the frequency of bad mental health days per month is likely to increase
Capacity and Policymaking: Does Higher State Legislative Professionalism Lead to the Passage of Better, Faster Child Welfare Legislation?
No full textM.P.P.The legislative professionalism literature suggests that higher levels of legislative professionalism lead to higher legislative capacity. However, the actual evidence about whether higher legislative capacity, in fact, does cause legislatures to enact more sophisticated legislation is unclear, because prior researchers have typically implicitly assumed that having legislative capacity and legislatures passing high-complexity legislation are one and the same. As a result, this study seeks to fill this gap in the literature by evaluating on average how, if at all, the level of a state’s legislative professionalism impacts the state’s capacity to speedily pass high-complexity child welfare legislation. To evaluate this question, I utilize a multiple linear regression identification strategy. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that legislative professionalism does not have a differential impact on the time that it takes state legislatures to enact highly complex legislation, compared to low-complexity legislation. Moreover, in fact, this analysis suggests that increasing professionalism increases the number of days that it takes state legislatures to enact legislation — without improving legislative efficiency in any way
Identidades Tejidas: Las Mujeres Detrás de Las Molas
No full textD.L.S.Though Guna molas are recognized throughout the world for their bright colors and complex embroidery, little is known about the Guna women who make molas. This ethnographic cross-sectional study, guided by feminist theories, with deliberate consideration for Indigenous methodologies, studies how Guna epistemology (Bab Igar) affects the self-identity of Guna women and how this is translated through their material art (mola). Current scholarly literature focuses on the history of Guna independence and the intricacies of mola designs, with some research touching on how both relate to Guna people and/or Guna women. However, current literature falls short in explicitly identifying Guna women as an integral part of Guna culture and, altogether, fails to consider (or capture) Guna women perspectives.Lack of consideration for Guna women perspectives on how their culture and epistemology influences their self-identity puts human values of appreciation, acceptance, and respect at risk. Through field work that includes 32 semi-structured interviews conducted in two remote communities of Guna Yala, this research finds that the Guna are a people grounded in their epistemology and that they have a strong connection to both nature and community. It discovers that all Guna women play a role in preserving and promoting Guna culture. Guna women do this through making and wearing molas, and while the act of making molas promotes the identity of the whole (Guna as a people), how they make molas and which designs they choose to incorporate in their molas are shaped by their individual identities (Guna as individual women).This research is valuable because although molas are a material art that is known around the world, to date, there has been no attempt to elevate the voices of the Guna women that make molas or to study their perspectives. Additionally, this research offers insight on how to conduct an ethnographic study that is grounded in feminist theories and Indigenous methodologies. It encourages academics to conduct research that is mindful of intersectionality, that is interpersonal, that encourages trust, and that is, above all, empowering and respectful to the participants and communities being studied
Ciudadanías radiales: señales hertzianas para escuchar el siglo XX colombiano
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines the sounds of modernity in twentieth-century Colombia by analyzing the tensions between radio and printed media within the nation’s cultural projects from the 1920s to the 1970s. I describe scenarios where radio used its creative capacity to craft radiogenic artifacts, shaping an “aural counterpoint” to the project of the lettered city, and how it sought to incorporate popular narratives into its previously monopolized discourse. I offer two analytical perspectives that narrate how the lettered and the aural worlds complement each other in twentieth-century Colombia. First, I present a cultural history of Colombian radio from its arrival in the 1920s to the 1970s, when radio reached its peak in the national media ecology. Then, I explore the case of Radio Sutatenza, a community-radio station that gained relevance with its “literacy campaign” for the campesinos of Colombia. This dual approach shifts the lens from studying radio’s echoes in literature to scrutinizing the literary manifestations created for radio broadcasting. This analysis contributes to the understanding of how radiophonic aurality appeared in Colombia and, I argue, pre-exists the literary discourse on radio.The first chapter examines how the Colombian government used radio to unify the nation and integrate campesinos into the national discourse. I focus on Sutatenza’s adaptation of Eugenio Díaz’s Manuela (1856) to explain how radio recovered the Colombian past to participate in the construction of the national imaginary. The second chapter explores how the social and political tensions of the 1930s and 1940s influenced cultural artifacts that either relied on radio or that used it as a prosthetic tool to reach a broader audience. I analyze the government-based projects of Radiodifusora Nacional as well as Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s use of radio to become the “People’s Voice.” The third chapter analyzes Sutatenza’s expansion beyond national boundaries, engaging in the global political discourse during the Cold War by broadcasting Agente 169. The concluding chapter shifts to radio reception, analyzing how radio listeners physically and symbolically took control of the radio waves, and revealed creative ways to participate in radio production as well as in the national discourse
Red Thread: Ties That Bind Vietnamese Women in National and Diasporic Vietnamese Literatures
No full textM.A.“Red Thread: Ties That Bind Vietnamese Women in National and Diasporic Vietnamese Literatures” is a project concerned with the site of heterosexual romance as a literary convention in Vietnamese literature––traditional and contemporary––, primarily as a space of studying surrounding platonic relationships between women. Through a comparative analysis of Nguyễn Du’s The Tale of Kiều and Thao Thai’s Banyan Moon, the thesis delves into two main areas of concern, that of the body and that of the home, specifically in relation to the figure of the Vietnamese woman both on and off the page. In a rejection of the Vietnamese woman as victim, “Red Thread: Ties That Bind Vietnamese Women in National and Diasporic Vietnamese Literatures” and the zine component of the thesis, as well as its primary central text, Hòng Diệp Xích Thằng, present Vietnamese women as women who both hurt and are hurt on their own terms