Narrowing the Digital Divide: A Better Broadband Universal Service Program

Universal service has long been an integral component of American telecommunications policy. As more activities move online, it becomes increasingly important to narrow the digital divide by helping low-income Americans get online and by extending broadband networks into unserved areas. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission’s reforms are unlikely to help solve this problem. The Commission is repurposing an $8 billion telephone subsidy program to focus instead on broadband networks. But when pressed, the agency admits that it has no proof that the program meaningfully affected telephone adoption rates, and it offers little evidence that it will fare any better at boosting broadband adoption. The Federal Universal Service Fund needs revolutionary, not evolutionary, change. Rather than modifying a problematic telephone-era program, Congress should adopt new initiatives designed to meet the unique challenges of the broadband era. Congress should offer targeted, direct, portable vouchers that improve the purchasing power of low-income households and allow them to participate meaningfully in telecommunications markets. And it should create a broadband availability block grant program to allow state public utility commissions to fund new networks through a reverse auction mechanism. Finally, it should eliminate the current USF surcharge and instead fund the program directly, which would improve congressional oversight and minimize the fraud and abuse that has historically marred the existing program

Queers Like Me

All of these art pieces have been inspired by the myriad of ways in which queer students at CSUMB have been subjected to hostile and violent homophobia from other students. This is a response to the every day saturation of heterosexual normativity that I experience at this school and in this country

The Construction of Gay Identity in Chile

This paper describes ways in which gay Chileans perceive gay identity in Chile. Two central questions originate this text: What are the key factors that socially construct gay identity in Chile? How do lesbian and gay Chileans respond to this social production of gay identity? The following pages represent a reflection on how gay identity is addressed by Chileans today

Optimization under Uncertainty with Applications to Multi-Agent Coordination

In this thesis several approaches for optimization and decision-making under uncertainty with a strong focus on applications in multi-agent systems are considered. These approaches are chance constrained optimization, random convex programs, and partially observable Markov decision processes

Fiscal impact of standardized surgeon preference cards for an acute care surgery program

Increasing numbers of government and commercial payers are considering a transition to "bundled payments." A fixed amount is reimbursed for a specific diagnosis regardless of costs incurred while providing care. The sustainability of individual physician practices and health systems depends on proactive cost containment without sacrificing quality of care or patient safety. Because many acute care surgery programs receive salary or operational support from hospitals, active participation to achieve this goal is mutually beneficial. We hypothesized that creating a standardized surgeon preference card for operations common to an acute care surgery practice would reduce costs and improve reimbursement