Campus, News

No debate among forensics team on travel ban

A recently enacted state assembly bill is preventing Cal State University Long Beach’s forensics team from participating in major competitions, and it’s absolutely fine with that.

Passed last year, California State Assembly Bill 1887 prohibits payment or support for travel by state funded agencies, including the entire California State University system, to any state that has enacted laws that discriminate or protect discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Currently, this includes the states of Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee. The law does allow for travel that is deemed “required,” such as travel required due to litigation.

This poses a problem for CSULB’s Beach Forensics (speech & debate) team. Normally, they’d be preparing to head to a national tournament overseen by the Cross Examination Debate Association held in Kansas in March. Instead, they’re deciding to abide by the rule of the law, and happily so.

“I think the law itself is good,” said professor Nick Russell, the faculty adviser to the team. “I think not supporting discrimination is a good thing. Is it unfortunate that it negatively impacts tournament travel? Absolutely. But . . . overall, yeah it’s probably good to not support states that support hate.”

Russell acknowledged that there have been hurdles caused by the law in terms of keeping up with tournament play, but that the team would be working toward figuring them out. According to Russell, at one point CEDA may have been planning on holding a West Coast tournament to accommodate the restriction, but he did not want to comment on whether that would come to fruition.

While right now, only CSULB’s forensics team is affected by the law, it has the potential to affect other teams and clubs in the future.

“The state is not going to allow us to approve travel, so there would be no reimbursement,” said Terie Bostic, the Administrative Services Manager for CSULB’s College of Liberal Arts. “If we got into the NCAA finals and it was in Kansas, then we’d be in trouble.”

A primary purpose of the law is to exert economic pressure on states that have passed various measures that discriminate along lines of sex or gender. As California is the world’s sixth largest economy, according to 2016 rankings by the World Bank, even optional or less-than-mandatory travel funded by the state could have potential impact.

“I definitely think that California has the potential to exert economic pressure on other states,” Russell said. “I also think that some of these beliefs are so firmly entrenched in the places that [the discriminatory laws] were enacted that  . . . it’s a moral righteousness thing. It’s an attitude of ‘we have the moral high ground so consequences be damned.’”

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