Mabel McElroy

Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

I taught two sections of freshman composition as a PhD student, about 15 hours a week with grading. We unionized in 2017 and the university recognized us as employees with bargaining rights over pay and workload. Meanwhile the starting quarterback was putting in 40-plus hours under a coach who controlled his schedule, his diet, his social media, and his class times, and he was legally a volunteer. The [NLRB](https://www.nlrb.gov/) has held for decades that graduate assistants doing university work are employees. Athletes do more university work, under tighter control, generating enormously more revenue. If the TA grading your papers is an employee, the linebacker selling out your stadium is one too. There's no principled line here, just a profitable one.

Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?

The rule can have exceptions for on-call work, accessibility, or a deadline. What matters is a predictable default. The Surgeon General specifically recommended [device-free mealtimes and gatherings](https://edsource.org/updates/surgeon-general-warns-social-media-may-harm-youth). Families can choose the window together and revisit it monthly, which is more transparent than parents policing each person's minute count.

I keep going back and forth. The bias in these tools is real, but so is the bias in the humans they replaced. Not sure a ban fixes either one.

Business · Oct 6, 2026 · Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

Exactly. Right now the rational move for a giant is to violate, pay, and repeat, because the fine is always smaller than the profit. Scaling the ceiling with revenue and repeat offenses flips that math.

Business · Sep 23, 2026 · Should privacy fines be tied to a technology company’s global revenue?