For four years, Stanford student Liam Anderson has gone to what he calls his “full-time job.” He puts on his uniform, laces up his shoes and just runs. As captain of the Stanford track and field team, the public policy major has put in 20 to 40 hours of running, conditioning and physical therapy each week — a pace he’ll continue when he returns to campus this fall to pursue his master’s degree.

It’s a lot of time away from academics, with little financial reward, which is partly why Anderson has been supporting and advising California lawmakers on new legislation that could dramatically alter college athletes’ compensation.

“This is the only labor market where the primary labor input — the players — receive essentially zero compensation from their employers,” Anderson said. “It is very difficult on a philosophical level to argue that these players do not deserve some form of compensation. To say a scholarship is enough is laughable.”

Assembly Bill 252, or the College Athlete Protection Act, would require California colleges to put some of their sports revenue into a fund that would pay student athletes when they complete their degrees. Athletes could earn as much as $25,000 for each year they participate in their sport.

But the bill has been controversial. Last week, its author, Assemblymember Chris Holden, put it on hold until next year after opponents — including the University of California, California State University and Team USA — argued it would further prioritize men’s basketball and football, causing campuses with tight athletic budgets to divert resources away from less lucrative sports. The NCAA has also opposed it.

Supporters say the first-in-the-nation bill, which the state Senate could take up again as early as January, bolsters athletes’ rights by giving them a cut of the revenue they generate. It’s the latest flashpoint in the debate over student athlete compensation, in which California has played a leading role.

“This is the only labor market where the primary labor input — the players — receive essentially zero compensation from their employers.”
— Liam Anderson, captain of the Stanford track & field team

As written, the bill would also require colleges to comply with a variety of health and safety standards, including paying all out-of-pocket health care costs for athletes injured on the field, and providing players with financial and life skills training. Sports agents seeking to represent student athletes would need to be certified by the state. A 21-member panel appointed by the Legislature and governor, with seats set aside for former college athletes, would oversee compliance.

The degree completion fund, however, has drawn the most attention since it would be a further blow to the amateurism model in college sports. California already catalyzed change within the NCAA when it allowed student athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness. NCAA policy now permits athletes to sign endorsement deals, but that money comes from private sponsors rather than the universities themselves. Athletes receiving it would be eligible for the degree completion funds, too.

Combined, California’s 26 Division I schools earned $1.2 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That includes media contracts, ticket sales, investment interest income, student activity fees and alumni contributions.

“Revenue is being generated. There are TV rights that are being negotiated for someone to make a lot of money, and it is not the student athlete,” said Holden, a Pasadena Democrat who played college basketball for San Diego State from 1978 to 1982.

“This is an opportunity to really recognize the kind of sacrifices that many of these athletes put on the line on behalf of universities and the NCAA, institutions that make billions of dollars,” Holden added.

Money for the degree completion fund would come from a university’s existing athletic revenue. Beginning in 2024, if an athletic department makes more annual revenue than it did in the 2021-22 academic year, the difference would be deposited in the fund. Athletes’ payments would depend in part on how much revenue their sport generates and how much their team already gives out in athletic grants.

Football and men’s basketball make up a majority of revenue brought in by athletic departments, and some of those funds currently go to subsidize other sports. That caused some supporters of those lower-revenue sports — such as swimming and volleyball — to worry that the bill would sap much-needed funding from their programs.

“If schools do not have the budget to fund sports, they will cut sports,” says an open letter from Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Danette Leighton to Holden. “If this were the case, we know from history that women’s sports and men’s Olympic sports would be among the first to be cut.”

Of the 21 NCAA Division I sports, 19 will be contested at either the 2024 Summer Olympics or 2026 Winter Olympics.

After initial concerns that the bill would violate Title IX by threatening the funding of women’s sports teams, lawmakers added an amendment to split the allocation of degree completion funds 50/50 between female and male college athletes.

Some opponents, however, still weren’t convinced.

“It’s great that (payments) would go towards some women, but if it becomes infeasible for schools to then support the programs at all, then we’re not really ahead of where we started,” said Maya Dirado, a Stanford graduate and Olympic gold medalist in swimming.

Liam Anderson, a Stanford track and field athlete and co-president of the university’s Student Athlete Advisory Committee, supports a proposal to pay college players a share of the revenue they generate. Photo by Semantha Norris, CalMatters

Elise Byun, a UC Berkeley gymnast and member of the NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, said she believes that NCAA athletes should be financially compensated by their college beyond athletic grants. However, she said the bill as written could jeopardize funding for non-revenue and Olympic sports, as well as programs like mental health counseling that would benefit all athletes.

“If the revenue that’s being taken is just giving back to football and basketball, we can’t advance the student athlete experience,” Byun said. “There’s no money left over to help bring up everyone.”

Also, the bill would not benefit athletes like Byun, who is not on scholarship, because degree payments would only go to those who receive an athletic grant. Division II, Division III and community college athletes would also be ineligible.

The University of California and California State University also raised concerns.

“The bill’s revenue sharing framework also would create broader inequities among our student athletes, as support for non-revenue sports would likely decrease and disproportionately impact women’s programs,” said Hazel Kelly, a CSU spokesperson. “This one-size-fits-all proposal is not appropriate for the broad diversity of size, scope and competitiveness that are the hallmarks of the CSU’s athletic programs.”

“If the revenue that’s being taken is just giving back to football and basketball, we can’t advance the student athlete experience. There’s no money left over to help bring up everyone.”
— Elise Byun, a UC Berkeley gymnast and member of the NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee

Holden said athletic departments shouldn’t be worried about losing money for different programs because the degree completion fund doesn’t tap the department’s total budget, just the “excess” revenue generated above 2021-22 levels. The bill also prohibits schools from cutting athletic programs that were in place in the 2021-22 academic year.

“So we have provisions in it to protect all programs within the athletic department — men’s and women’s sports, from NCAA Division I football all the way to the rugby players who happen to be on a team if you have a rugby program — so that those programs would be maintained,” he said.

The next frontier in the debate over athletes’ rights

Holden declined further comment on why he had chosen to delay the bill, or the specifics of its formula for funding degree payments. The bill had been scheduled to be heard by the Senate Education Committee on July 5, but was pulled from the agenda that day and has become a “two-year bill,” meaning it can be considered in the second year of California’s two-year legislative session. That’s a common move by lawmakers who want more time to negotiate details of legislation and sway opponents.

While the bill likely faces a long road, its passage could further cement California’s status as a pioneer on college athlete compensation.

Mark Nagel, a professor of sport and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina, said that similar institutional blowback to college athletics reform has been seen before in the past and that prior concerns haven’t really materialized.

“There’s always the idea that college athletics say that any change is going to cause the sky to fall and the world to end,” Nagel said. “We’ve already seen that, whether it’s high-, mid- or low-level programs, Division I universities and colleges have figured out ways to find that money.”

But Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, said that universities making direct payments to athletes beyond scholarships creates a variety of financial issues because there are Division I schools whose athletic departments run on deficits.

“When they lose money, the school has to raise tuition, it has to raise athletic fees, it has to go to the state legislature for more subsidies, it has less money to provide for the education of the athletes. On all of those grounds, it’s a very problematic proposal,” Zimbalist said.

A previous legislative attempt to establish a mandatory degree completion fund for athletes failed in 2022. The current bill passed the California Assembly before heading to the Senate.

The National College Players Association, one of the forces behind California’s push to allow athletes to sign paid endorsement deals, is co-sponsoring the degree completion fund bill, and the California Labor Federation supports it.

“Athletes throughout the state of CA would gain unprecedented and much needed protections, freedoms and rights. Every athlete will benefit if AB 252 is approved,” NCPA President Ramogi Huma said in an email.

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CalMatters politics reporter Alexei Koseff contributed to this story. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

If you’re anything like me (god forbid), and you read a sentence like, “Dylan said they’d like a large latte,” you might find yourself going back over the previous paragraph to figure out who was Dylan was going to share the drink with. Turns out, no one. Dylan, whatever his/her/their birth sex or chosen gender*, prefers the pronoun “their.” Put down my double-take to the singular fact of my age: I was raised in the era when a woman was addressed as Madam Chairman, when flight attendants were mostly stewardesses, when my mum was often referred to as Mrs. Aubrey Evans (despite her name being Lyn), when “gay” meant “happy,” and the honorific “Ms.” was barely a gleam in Gloria Steinem’s eye.

(* Other than about 1 in 6,000 humans — about the odds of a tossed quarter landing on its edge — we’re all born male or female. As Simone de Beauvoir put it in The Second Sex, the sexes “are basically defined by the gametes they produce.” Big gametes = female (eggs); small gametes = male (sperm).; these are, in our species, eggs and sperm, respectively. That’s sex, not chosen, and almost always binary. And quite separate from one’s preferred gender.)

Take these three sentences that use “their”:

• Jane likes their coffee without milk. (The speaker is being sensitive to the fact that Jane prefers “they/their” to “she/her.” Or anything else.)
• My friend had a teacher who hated it when their students arrived late. (I never bothered to find out the teacher’s gender.)
• Everyone has their little foibles. (Despite what my MS Word spellcheck says, it’s OK to mix singular and plural like this, see title of this piece. Has been for years. For instance, “Any student handing in their homework late will be penalized,” has been used throughout my lifetime. Actually, add another 500 or so years! The OED notes that a poem written in 1375 has, in modern English, “Each man hurried … till they drew near … where William and his darling were lying together.”)

Back to the gender issue, which has a very wobbly history. Take the Declaration of Independence, with its hypocritical (unless you were a white over-21 male landowner): “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal…”

So what’s left for an old white fogy like me, albeit one who has the good fortune to be married to a feminist who, 50 years ago, set me right about Ms. and much else? I still hear myself saying, “Thanks guys!” to the multi-gendered baristas as I leave OTCC; I cringe inwardly at a sentence like, “Alex answered their phone”; and I probably mansplain without realizing it. I’ll keep trying, though.

But I doubt if you’ll ever find me saying, or writing, such neologisms as xe/xem, ze/zim, or sie/hir. I’ll leave that to the kids.

Plastic is everywhere and not in a good way. From the Mariana Trench to the top of Everest to even your own blood (ew!), plastic pollution is a big and growing problem.

Jen Savage, Senior Plastic Pollution Manager at the Surfrider Foundation joins the show to talk about Plastic Free July, an international movement to try to reduce plastic use as much as possible for the entire month.

Need some help getting started? Check out the Surfrider Foundation’s tips for plastic-free living.

People at the present time may be surprised to know that the manufacture of leather was the third most important industry in Humboldt County during the late 188Os, 189Os and the early 1900s. In 1893, there were three tanneries: one in Arcata, one near Eureka, and one at Rohnerville. The bark for tanning was obtained from the tan-bark oak forests in the county, and part of raw hides were supplied by butchers of the county, but the larger portion was procured from San Francisco.

In Southern Humboldt County, the Wagner family from Stockton built the only extract plant on the Pacific Coast. It all started when Grandfather Charles Wagner came to California from Germany as a young man of eighteen to join the gold miners and to escape recruitment for the Kaiser’s Army. He went to the Mother Lode Country but failed to find gold. His father had operated a tannery in Germany, and Charles had worked for him. At this time there was a huge demand for buckskin, and Charles decided to build a tannery in the town of Stockton on the San Joaquin River.

In order to cure and preserve the skins from the animals, the chemical extract, tannic acid, was needed. This ingredient was obtained from the oak trees in Sacramento Valley. Charles married and a son, Edward, was born, who later joined his father in the tanning business.

The Wagners ran out of oak trees, and the two of them made a trip into Northern California in 1901 where they discovered a good concentration of California tan oak trees which grew among the redwoods in the watershed of the area near Briceland in southern Humboldt County. Here the Wagners decided to build an extract plant which would be cheaper and more convenient the than shipping the tan oak bark to Stockton.

In order to get the tan oak trees, the Wagners had to buy land and stumpage rights on the lands of the homesteaders. Many of the homesteaders found that they could not make a living on their forty acres of poor land, and they sold out to the Wagners who finally acquired some 7,000 acres. In 1902, the Wagners built a huge extract plant at Briceland, the only one of its kind on the Pacific Coast. In order to get the thick extract liquid called “molasses,” large redwood tanks, 12 feet in diameter and 20 feet high were installed in a large two-story building. Then by a simple process, like making coffee iu a percolator, the ground-up bark would be put in the false tops and hot water would be pumped over and over the bark chips until the bark was spent. The dark water would then be pumped into another tank with fresh bark to strengthen the liquid. This process was repeated through six tanks until the liquid was pumped into a huge copper vacuum where it was boiled down to make a thick molasses-like consistency.

This heavy concentrate of tanning material was then poured into a barrel, and was like “getting several cords of bark into one barrel.” These heavy barrels were moved by teams to Shelter Cove, and then by a contracted ship to the Stockton plant where the “molasses” was emptied into vats to determine the proper strength for tanning. This was a cheap way to send the tanning ingredient to Stockton.

At the Briceland plant there were drying sheds for the bark, a barrel factory where 50-gallon oak barrels were made to transport the syrup extract, and a barn yard which contained a blacksmith, a mule-shoeing man, and 100 mules. There were also bunkhouses and a cookhouse building where “logger” meals were served.

The plant only operated in the summer because the road to Shelter Cove was too muddy during the rainy season. The Wagners employed about 100 local people during the summer, and Briceland was a bigger town at that time than Garberville. The town consisted of a store, a hotel, several saloons, and many homes.

Two woods camps were usually established in a central location in the woods where there was a cook tent, a dining tent, and sleeping tents for the men. The bark was usually collected in the spring when the sap was running and the bark could be easily split. First the bark was cut and taken from the lower trunk of the tree, and then the bark of the tree was cut from the top down, and the rest of the bark was removed. There was much waste in the barking operations. The bark was stacked along the trails, and loaded on mules which took the bark out of the canyons up to the roads where the bark was loaded onto horse wagons and taken to the Briceland plant where it was dried for one year before being processed.

The big problem in the tan bark operation was the roads.

These were only pack trails to Shelter Cove, and the Wagners had to build a road for the wagon trains with horses and plows and Fresno scrapers. The roads were built along the ridges so that there would be little dirt to move and where the rains would not wash out the roads.

Four fifty-gallon heavy barrels, weighing 300 pounds each, were placed on wagons and drawn by six horses. Halfway between Briceland and Shelter Cove a camp was established with a barn, feed, and relief teams. The teamsters with their wagons would start at daylight and arrive at the halfway station or “nooning grounds” at noon. A wagon would also arrive about the same time from Shelter Cove with a load of merchandise, and the teamsters would exchange loads. After getting fresh horses, the teamsters would head back to their respective areas. The steep terrain and weight of the barrels were a severe strain on the horses and they would be relieved at the halfway point. By this procedure, each teamsters could go back home every night.

The Wagners operated the extract plant for twenty years, from 1902 to 1922. In time Grandfather Charles Wagner turned the plant over to his son Edward who spent part of the summers in Briceland. Edward and his wife had two were born in the early 1900’s. Every summer the boys and their mother would come to Briceland. They started their long trip from Stockton to San Francisco where they stayed overnight. Then by train they arrived in Willits where they again spent the night before taking the train to Fort Bragg on the coast. The next day they traveled by horse stage to Usal where they spent the night, and the next day to Four Corners where there was a rig waiting to take them to Briceland.

When Edward and Charles got older, they went to work in the family business. About 1921, the Wagners ran out of tan bark, and they wanted to relocate their plant near Highway 101 in order to have access to more areas of tan bark. The County would not help them build a road, so the Wagners decided to forget the new venture. As time went on, the demand for tannic acid and leather declined sharply.

The reason for the decline was that from 1900 to 1920 there was a huge market for leather goods in the Orient, specifically in Japan and China. The aggressive Japanese came to America where they learned the business and hired men to build plants in Japan where they developed their own industry and took over the Orient trade. The local domestic market for shoe leather was very small because most shoes were made in the East.

About 1928, all the tanneries on the Pacific Coast went out of business. The Wagners closed their Briceland plant in 1922 and the Stockton plant in 1928.

When the tannery closed in Stockton, Edward, who always liked to fly, took over the Stockton airport. When World War II started, he signed a contract with the Government to train pilots at Carson City, Nevada. When there was a surplus of pilots in 1944, Edward, in order to help the war effort, came back to the Briceland acres to develop a sheep ranch. He ranched until 1970 when he retired. He now lives in Garberville and spends his leisure time traveling in foreign countries.

His young brother, Charles, who has two degrees from Stanford, a B.A. in Chemical Engineering and an M.A. in Business Administration, took over the tannery buildings in Stockton and developed a successful moving and storage business He is now semi-retired, and maintains a second home near Garberville.

The Wagner acres near Briceland are now managed by professional foresters who follow a cycle of rotation. Trees are planted, and over half a million feet of timber is cut each year and sold to the local mills. The Wagners purchased more land recently and are now harvesting Monterey pines.

When their father died in 1940, the boys wanted to establish a memorial for him in the form of a redwood grove because he had been a pioneer in southern Humboldt County. They were able to purchase 80 acres of virgin redwood six miles north of Prairie Creek Park, and they established the Edward Wagner Memorial Grove in his honor.

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The story above was originally printed in the November/December 1977 issue of The Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

Kathryn (Douglass) Hapgood won the race and went home to be with Jesus on May 16, 2023. She left peacefully while at home being cared for by those she loves most. 

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Melody Lynn Molver (Presley)
November 20, 1964 - June 20, 2023

Melody was born in Garden Grove, Calif. on November 20, 1964, which also happened to be her parent’s wedding anniversary.

She grew up in Norco, Calif. and was part of 4H as well as she was in the band as a baton twirler. She was a huge animal lover from a young age. She rode horses and raised pigs in her younger years.

In 1981 she met and married her first husband David and had her first daughter Crystal in 1982. In 1984 they moved to Eureka with her brother Mark Presley.

In 1986 she moved back to Southern California to be closer to her parents. She met her husband and the love of her life, Teghe Molver, in 1995. They had their daughter, Cheyenne, in 1999 and were married in 2001. With marrying the love of her life she took on two more kids that she raised and loved with all of her heart — Michael Cruz Molver and Clarissa Sueleann Grimm.

Melody decided after both of her parents passed that she wanted to live in the redwoods so in 2010 she packed up her family and moved to Trinidad, where she happily lived out the rest of her life.

She worked at Cher-ae Heights Casino for many years and many departments. She loved all of the people she worked with and seeing all of her regular customers in the gift shop.

She is preceded in death by her mother Fern Wight, her father Richard Wright, her brothers Mark Presley, Hugh Wright and Ralph Wright.

She is survived by her daughters Crystal Brown, Cheyenne Molver, Clarissa Grimm. Her son Michael Molver, her husband Teghe Molver and her brother Bill Wright.

Thank you all so much for loving my mother as much as her family did and does

There will be a celebration of life on July 20, 2024.

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Carolyn Ann Luis (Cupp)
September 18, 1964 – June 25, 2023

Carolyn Ann Cupp was born September 18, 1964, in Crescent City to Morgan “Bud” and Alice Cupp and she left to be with our lord on June 25, 2023 at the age of 58.

Carolyn grew up in Crescent City and attended Bess Maxwell and Crescent Elk, and then graduated from Del Norte High School in 1982. She enjoyed being a part of the baton and dance group where they were in the fair and parades performing different dances and marching twirling batons. Carolyn was in Girl Scouts and had her mom as her leader for several years. She loved going four wheeling with the family - and oh the stories they can tell, spending time with family playing in the snow, surfing with friends and camping especially at Siskiyou Forks. Carolyn was daddy’s little girl until the day she left us. She became a type 1 diabetic at 8 years old after slipping into a coma for three days. She was told she would never have children or live a full life, but she didn’t let that stop her from living life the way she wanted.

After graduation Carolyn along with her mom and dad moved to Blue Lake, where she started her life as a mother, which she never thought would be possible. She met the love of her life, David Luis, in 1991, and they later married in 1998 and built a life with in Eureka. They celebrated 19 years of marriage before separating and co-parenting as friends. Carolyn worked several different jobs trying to see where she wanted to be, from waitressing at the Pantry to being a CNA in an assisted living facility to in-home health care, working at Winco, Target and being a stay at home mom and later grandma.

Carolyn is survived by her dad and mom, Bud and Alice Cupp, husband David Luis Sr, daughters Terra Cummings (Josh), Jennifer “Jenny” Cupp (Jim), son David Luis Jr (Elizabeth), granddaughters Kaitlyn, Emmalyn, Paige and Kali Cummings, grandsons Jaxon and Radley O’Garey and nephews Ryan and Adam Cupp and numerous Aunts and Uncles, Cousins, in-laws and friends of which there are too many to mention but never forgotten.

She is preceded in death by her brother Walter Cupp, grandson Caleb Cummings, father in-law Elvin Luis, and numerous grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws and many others.

There will be a celebration of life on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 2806 Dolbeer St, Eureka, CA at 1 p.m.

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