“This is fundamentally a human rights issue — not special rights, not special desires, just equivalent treatment to other people in society,” said Dr. Sean Bouileau, an LGBT issues specialist and counseling psychologist at UC Santa Cruz.

Boileau provided his expertise and consultation before the hearings of this case.

The bill, which bans therapies that aim to change an individual’s sexual orientation, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 30. Reparative or conversion therapy usually addresses homosexuality as having a “cause and effect” nature. After identifying the instance of trauma or abuse (the “cause”) that is linked with their orientation (the “effect”), and their homosexual desires are claimed to dissipate completely.

“They’re calling it therapy and treatment, but it’s making people more depressed,” Bouileau said. “It’s making people hate themselves and foster that [hate] and encourage that [hate].”

The bill continues to face opposition and even legal action against it, like the Christian legal group Pacific Justice Institute, which plans to challenge the ban on behalf of therapists.

The ban’s proponents and allies however have focused on emotional testimonies of witnesses for the potency of their argument.

“I don’t think they have science on their side at the end of the day,” Bouileau said. “People’s beliefs need to end where another human being’s rights begin.”

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

The group behind it is the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC), which aims to bridge the “digital divide” in Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties.

“The digital divide means those who are not connected,” said Gladys Palpallatoc, associate vice president of the California Emerging Technologies Fund (CETF), “those who aren’t seeing the benefits of technology as it advances, much less being online.”

The percentage of Californians with an Internet connection in their home increased from 55 percent in 2008 to 72 percent in 2011, according to a survey taken by the CETF. The 2011 survey also found that this number is significantly lower among underrepresented groups and those who are disabled, with only 55 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of disabled people in California having Internet access in their homes.

“Although we know that the pace of technology is quick and most folks will adapt,” said Gladys Palpallatoc, associate vice president of the CETF, “there are some folks who are already at a disadvantage, and those communities will only become more deeply disadvantaged without help.”

The CETF was born in 2005 from the dual mergers of AT&T with SBC and Verizon with MCI. As a condition of those mergers, the California Public Utilities Commission required that Verizon and AT&T pay $60 million toward creating the CETF, a California nonprofit that works to ensure that rural, poor and otherwise disadvantaged communities are not left behind by the progress of broadband technologies.

A central component of its strategy is to organize and formalize regional groups throughout California already involved in broadband development, so that they might take note of the digital divide and attempt to address it.

“[The CCBC] was fairly loose-knit until the CETF provided some organizational structure in 2006, and then the stimulus of 2009 came along and that provided a real impetus to actually do something,” said Steve Blum, president of Tellus Venture, a private consulting firm specializing in community broadband development and a member group of the CCBC. “So that’s when the CCBC became an operating organization, as opposed to just a talking organization.”

The CCBC includes representatives from the cities of Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Monterey; CSU Monterey Bay; UCSC; local internet provider Cruzio and many other private companies, as well as nonprofits. Together they have recently unveiled two new projects designed to further “the mission of the CCBC, [which] is to plan for, build and connect the region’s disparate telecommunications networks and fill critical gaps,” according to the website of CSUMB’s Center for Wireless Education and Technology (WeTEC), a member of the CCBC.

The first of these was made possible by a $4.9 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will go toward establishing a series of Public Computing Centers (PCCs) throughout the Central Coast.

Spearheaded by Arlene Krebs, professor of communications at CSUMB and the founding director of WeTEC, the project has established over 30 PCCs throughout Monterey County so far and has plans to extend the program to Santa Cruz County.

The CCBC brings in computing equipment and broadband access to provide those who might not have access to the Internet with a place they can go to plug in and connect. The centers are housed in areas that already serve the community, such as Boys and Girls Clubs, libraries, the National Steinbeck Center, and Krebs’ personal project, the upgrading of a pre-existing CSUMB satellite campus into a PCC.

“The federal government says that we are the most diverse partnership in the U.S. that came together to do this sort of thing,” Krebs said.

The six-month-old PCC at the CSUMB satellite campus is in Salinas’ Chinatown, an area with a large proportion of the city’s homeless population who are the main beneficiaries of this center.

“The homeless people in that area have now connected with family,” Krebs said. “When you ask what the impact is, they now have email accounts, they now are on Facebook, they’re finding their friends, they’re finding their family, they’re learning new skills, they’re also enjoying entertainment once in a while — things that most of us just take for granted.”

This project’s second component is a 65-foot flatbed truck outfitted with 21 computing stations, which will serve Monterey’s agricultural workers by pulling up next to the fields and allowing them to use the Internet.

Other groups within the CCBC are in the midst of implementing a three-year-long planning and organizational strategy, aimed at creating a database of the Central Coast’s current broadband access and identifying key areas that can benefit from improvement. The project is funded by a $450,000 grant from the California Advanced Services Fund. Work began on it in January.

As the CCBC’s initiatives take their course, Krebs and the other members are hopeful that they will achieve a lasting impact on the Central Coast’s residents and businesses. Still, money is tight, and the funding that created the PCCs is set to run out in six months.

Krebs is in the process of finding private donors who will keep the project going. She said as long as the CCBC continues to work hard, the Central Coast will see its digital divide become smaller year by year.

“You have to keep your eye on the prize. You have to be vigilant,” Krebs said. “Because I’ve been working on this pup since 2002, and I’m not stopping now.”

Illustration by Christine Hipp

Free: a word that makes many practiced consumers narrow their eyes and think, “What’s the catch?”

On April 11 the office of California State Senator Darrell Steinberg released a statement that said two new bills passed in the Senate Education Committee would create free digital open source textbooks for the 50 most common lower-division classes taken in college.

According to the press release, “SB 1052 would set up a competitive bid process inviting faculty, publishers, Silicon Valley and all others to bring forth their best ideas for the creation of free digital textbooks that can be easily customized and rearranged. SB 1053 would create the California Open Source Digital Library to serve as a statewide repository for the textbooks and related materials.”

California State Universities and California Community Colleges will be required to jointly administer the library. While the bill cannot require the autonomous UC system to participate, the bill requests that the UCs also contribute to administrating the library.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP), whose industry would suffer if the bills passed, opposes the bill.

“There’s no such thing as a free online textbook,” said Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at AAP. “It’s just a question of who’s going to pay for it.”

Hildebrand said publishers have been replacing textbooks with cheaper, digital copies throughout the past decade and that people just need to compare how the cost of tuition has risen over the past few years to how the cost of textbooks has accompanied this rise.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, UC Santa Cruz’s tuition experienced a 63.6 percent increase in tuition from $8,200 in 2008 to $13,416 in 2011. However, the average cost of books and supplies increased by only 3.2 percent since 2008, from $1,356 per student to $1,400 in 2011.

According to the AAP, the cost of producing a textbook and all the materials that might be included with it can exceed $1 million.

“I’d like to see this legislation produce 50 textbooks for $25 million, but it’s not possible to create 50 quality textbooks with the necessary supplements for that amount of money,” Hildebrand said.

SB 1052 states that a $25 million state-led strategic investment in Open Education Resources (OER) can fund textbooks of the highest quality for the 50 most commonly taken lower division courses.

“We are exploring possible options for funding,” Trost said. “Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg has indicated in committee hearings that it could possibly come from the general fund, but that he is open to finding non-profits willing to help. The Republican leader indicated he would be more inclined to support the bills if we found non-general fund options.”

If SB 1052 passes, a California state OER will be created. However, there are many existing OER resources that already offer textbooks, most of them for college-level education. Currently, an OER website created by the Institute for Knowledge Management in Education offers 568 textbooks for post-secondary education.

Frank Baüerle, mathematics lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, supports efforts to reduce costs of textbooks for students. Like Hildebrand, he is concerned about the quality of textbook content.

“Our department would definitely be interested and willing to look at a freely available textbook,” Baüerle said. “Now, a book these days is no longer just a book. There are additional resources that come bundled with the textbook, such as access to online resources and online homework. If, and if so, how, a freely available text supports these aspects remains to be seen.”

Senate bills 1052 and 1053 have passed in the Education Committee and must pass through the Appropriations Committee before they can reach the floor of the Senate. While the bills make their way through Congress, they serve as one of many attempts towards a larger effort to aid the growing costs of higher education.

“I think it is a good idea for the state to invest some money to help students,” Baüerle said. “But first and foremost, the state should work to lower tuition by reinvesting in education rather than slashing it.”