Assistant News Editor
California has passed Assembly Bill No. 1887, denying all state-sponsored and state-funded travel to anti-LGBTQ states.
These states include Mississippi, Kansas, North Carolina and Tennessee, and they are also subject to change if any other state passes any anti-LGBTQ laws or retracts their current laws.
While this law was passed and put into place at the beginning of 2017, the effect of it is primarily being felt now as students and faculty are being prevented from their travel to these states.
Schools all around the state are feeling the effects of this from UC Davis to Cal State Long Beach. Californian students who were previously thought to have funded travel have had to put all conference and competition plans on hold due to the law restrictions.
While this law does not prevent CSU Bakersfield from participating in any of its scheduled sporting events, it is still having an impact on athletics.
For them, according to Athletics Multimedia Coordinator Corey Costelloe, it is the recruiting that will be feeling the effect the most.
“We have several recruits, and those that have committed to us from Mississippi and Tennessee,” Costelloe wrote in an email.
With the ban causing problems with both future travel and future recruitment, the athletics department will continue to seek out athletes from these states, using non-state funding for their travels.
“We don’t feel it is right to deny a student-athlete an opportunity to receive a scholarship due to the political landscape in which he/she does not have control over,” Costelloe wrote in an email.
Other CSUB students also feel that the ban is unfair to those relying on state funds.
For accounting major Anahit Hairabedyan, she doesn’t agree with the anti-LGBTQ laws, but says these states have the right to have the laws, and their views should be respected. Hairabedyan went on to say that this law could conjure up interstate conflict.
“It would be the north and south all over again,” said Hairabedyan.
Economics major Adrian Perez shared similar thoughts, and had not heard of the California law earlier.
“California has a huge influence, and this will have an impact, but whether it’ll be a good one, I don’t know,” said Perez.
