Linfield Freshman to form a Turning Point USA Chapter
Via the Linfield Turning Point Instagram
Emma Campbell, and Reid Sturn, ’24, as featured on the Linfield Turning Point Instagram.
February 1, 2021
A tabling event hosted by Turning Point USA (TPUSA) caught the attention of Linfield students walking past Dillin dining hall in the afternoon on Tuesday, January 19.
Since they’re not considered an official club by ASLU, they held their tabeling event on Linfield Avenue—a public street that permits visitors. Without approval from the student senate, the club will not receive school funding or be able to host official events on Linfield campus according to ASLU President Sean Webster.
Austin Nealeigh, a TPUSA recruiter from Newburg, tabled at Linfield last October. During this event, he met freshman Reid Sturn, who wants to start a TPUSA Chapter at Linfield.
Since the event, Sturn has decided to fill out the proper paperwork so his TPUSA Chapter will be recognized by ASLU.
TPUSA is an organization founded by Charlie Kirk, who also owns his own news network. Kirk claims that TPUSA is non-partisan, but many of the issues they support—like free speech, small government, and free market—fall in alignment with Republican party ideals.
Additionally, Kirk was a speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
TPUSA endorses a variety of conservative personalities like Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and Ben Shapiro. The organization helps local chapters around the United States set up events for these individuals to speak at different high school and college campuses.
They also host an annual Youth Action Summit. Sturn attended the summit in December 2020 with Nealeigh. At the summit, he met President Donald Trump Jr., saw Tucker Carlson speak, along with Charlie Kirk and others.
“It was awesome, Tucker Carlson came out, just like a rockstar,” Sturn said.
Sturn attends Linfield Republican Club meetings, and has asked president of the club, Emma Campbell to be the secretary for the chapter.
Campbell said she thinks most of the members of Republican club will attend the Turning point club. She indicated that it will be another community for Republicans on campus.
Mikayla Minton, president of the Linfield Democrats Club, is surprised that members of Republican Club want to partner with TPUSA, “It’s just a farther right version of what they believe,” she said.
Minton continued with a reminder of the Democrat club’s mission, “We are here to have conversations with students and interact with organizations, we are not here to interact with any outside organizations,” she said. “We don’t want to change our club to a particular part of politics.”
Campbell, a freshman, established the Linfield Republicans Club with an intention of “coming in peace and having conversations,” she said. They felt that Linfield lacked a diverse political presence, and wanted to make sure all voices were represented.
Sturn said it is important to start TPUSA, “to educate people, and try to get people to think the right things. It is beneficial for kids to get out and get their voices heard,” he said.
Robert M. Tull • Feb 27, 2021 at 12:50 am
The college experience is a wonderful time in a person’s life. Away from parents and other authority figures that a person had while growing up. You are introduced to many new and old ideas and paradigms that are oftentimes presented to you as fact, rather than as one of many views. You’re taught about critical thinking and deductive logic and asked to apply these skills to derive a strong argument or an empirical scientific fact. Yet, the ideas shared and posted regarding the benefits of having this club included the comment: “Sturn said it is important to start TPUSA, “to educate people and try to get people to think the right things.” “It is beneficial for kids to get out and get their voices heard,” he said.” What are the “right things” that students are supposed to think? I was of the mind after 10 years of my college education, that the purpose of learning was for the student to learn to think for themselves. To have a mind that is thirsty for knowledge, and willing and able to challenge not only their own beliefs regarding the world they live in but those of society as well. Ultimately, identifying faulty belief systems, and developing new and empirical beliefs. Our political parties today for the most part are mouthpieces that utter proclamations that are filled with faulty reasoning and ill-logic and dishonesty, made to influence our society in ways that give them more power and control over the individual rights of our citizens and the freedoms that are proclaimed in our constitution. Often, getting people to “Think the Right Things” is in practice getting people to think and act in the wrong way. Examples: Nazi Propaganda, the CCP, and North Korea enforcing the party doctrine and eliminating any and all challenges to that doctrine. Beware, of anyone who attempts to get people to “Think the right things.”
Raymond Lee Sifdol • Feb 3, 2021 at 2:27 pm
During most of the time I attended Linfield College from 1957 to 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of The United States of America. Now I live down the road (Interstate 70) not all that far from Abilene, Kansas where the Eisenhower Museum and Library is located.
Ironically, it was President Eisenhower who warned about the “Military-Industrial Complex” before he left office. Of course that is exactly what we have now in 2021, run by cartels of well heeled technocrats, ably assisted by the social media mob, Hollywood celebrities, and a fleet of academic intellectual snobs. Combined, they form what I would call The DemoPublican party, aided and abetted by populist lunatic fringe groups on the left and right such as Antifa, and to include Turning Point USA. Consequently, traditional Republican and Democrat Parties are gone, probably forever.
With that said, by all means study history and politics and develop you own unique world views while at Linfield University, but save that money these political organizations will ask you for, and spend it instead on Mocha Latte at Starbucks.
Raymond Lee Sifdol (Linfield College Class of 1961, History Major)