New Orleans, LA – On December 3, students at Loyola University New Orleans showed up to oppose the second attempt at chartering a Turning Point USA chapter on their campus.
In October of this year, a small group of conservative students attended a student senate session to propose a TPUSA Charter at Loyola. At that meeting, over 100 students packed the room to show their opposition to a chapter on campus. When the senate denied the charter, the pro-TPUSA students appealed to have their proposal heard again.
The vice president of Loyola’s Student Government Association (SGA) called an emergency senate meeting for the night of December 2 with one agenda item – the chartering of TPUSA at Loyola. Around 70 anti-TPUSA students and several pro-TPUSA non-students filled the senate chambers starting at 6 p.m.
At first, the student government president told attendees that several people would have to leave the room in order to not exceed the room’s capacity of 50 people. Some moved to the hallway and then were dispersed by university police. The senate session began and the vice president motioned to adopt an executive session that would, essentially, force everyone out of the room except the SGA members and the students trying to establish the TPUSA chapter. Senators voted unanimously to adopt an executive senate session, consequently forcing all constituents out of the room.
Students, as well as TPUSA supporters, stood in the library’s commons area for around an hour and a half awaiting the senate’s decision. While waiting, students were asked how they felt about having a TPUSA chapter on campus.
“TPUSA isn’t just a student group. They are a group backed by the GOP with missions like the Campus Victory Project which have the whole purpose of limiting free speech on college campuses and infiltrating student governments so that they can harm progressive student organizations. They are not an organization about freedom of thought and speech, they are an organization about control,” said junior and sociology major Miu Sims.
A freshman biology major expressed concern about the professor watch list that TPUSA maintains saying, “If professors are constantly being surveilled like that, they lose their freedoms as well. The whole higher education system will begin to lose its integrity.”
Around 7:45 p.m. the students trying to charter the TPUSA chapter started to exit the room. It became apparent to students that the SGA would not announce the verdict for at least another hour until everyone had left. Students then began to chant “No Trump, no KKK, no TPUSA” and around 25 students marched out of the library and rallied outside.
At the rally, senior sociology major Juleea Berthelot said to the crowd, “TPUSA doesn’t belong on our campus, and if they are chartered we will be there to protest them. Every time they try to bring a racist onto our campus we will be there to say: ‘Hell no!’ Not on our campus, not in our name, because we are a diverse community here. That’s why I chose [Loyola] and I’m sure that’s why you chose it!” Students erupted in claps and cheers. Berthelot continued, “And we’re going to keep it that way. We aren’t going to let right-wing reactionaries kick us off our own campus.”
By 8:50 p.m. it was announced that the Loyola student government senate decided to, once again, deny TPUSA’s charter.
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