Despite recent incidents involving allegations of racism and a homophobic honor code, BYU Hawaii is still getting to host the Warriors’ training camp.
The Golden State Warriors will be holding their first week of training camp in Hawai’i this year. The team plans to spend a week practicing at BYU-Hawaii’s facilities. The Utah Jazz practiced at the same facilities last year, but it’s somewhat surprising to see an organization like the Warriors choose to engage with a university that has a questionable track record with race and sexuality.
During last school year a Black student was told his locs were in violation of the honor code by campus security officers and administrators. In fact, per reporting by Courtney Tanner of the Salt Lake Tribune, the VP of Student Life told the student that his locs were “a distraction” and that his refusal to cut them meant he was “trying to push his own agenda and be defiant.” The student argued the honor code, which did not ban locs or require hair of a certain length, was being deployed with clear racial bias.
Furthermore, the Mormon Church has released multiple reports in recent years that noted frequent use of the N-word and other racial slurs at BYU’s campus in Utah. While Hawai’i has one of the smallest populations of Black people in the United States (2.2% of the population), Black students are still underrepresented on the BYU-Hawaii campus (0.3% of students are Black).
But such allegations aren’t the only on-campus issue at BYU-Hawaii that seems to run counter to the politics of many prominent members of the Warriors organization.
The school’s honor code requires campus community members to be “abstaining from any sexual relations outside a marriage between a man and a woman.” However, the school’s website specifically states that LGBTQ+ members of the campus community can be disciplined for “going on a date, holding hands and kissing… any same sex romantic behavior is in violation of the principles of the Honor Code.”
The Warriors have been one of the most prominent organizations in pro sports to align themselves with the Democratic Party and more liberal policies. Both Steph Curry and Steve Kerr spoke at last week’s Democratic National Convention, and the organization has celebrated and highlighted its diversity for many years. The Dubs were the first defending NBA champions to host an LGBTQ Pride Night, and publicly celebrated their longtime president and COO Rick Welts for breaking barriers as the first openly gay executive in the NBA. It seems to go against that practice to work with BYU-Hawaii rather than working with the public University of Hawai’i at Mānoa if they want to include the 50th state.