\n<\/p>\n
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed Sept. 10.<\/p>\n
Trent Nelson\/The Salt Lake Tribune\/Getty Images News\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Three months after Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination, the footprint of the right-wing youth organization he founded continues to grow on college campuses.<\/p>\n
This week, Turning Point USA chapters at both Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Oklahoma reported membership surges. According to the Indiana Daily Student<\/em> (IDS) and Indy Star<\/em>, IU\u2019s chapter says its membership has tripled this fall, from 180 to 363. At the University of Oklahoma\u2014which put an instructor on leave after the Turning Point chapter accused them of \u201cviewpoint discrimination\u201d\u2014the group\u2019s membership has grown from 15 to 2,000 over the past year, NBC<\/em> <\/em>reported.<\/em><\/p>\n Those increases follow other local media reports about new chapters and membership growth at scores of other universities across the country, including the University of Missouri, and Vanderbilt and Brigham Young Universities. Within eight days of Kirk\u2019s death, Turning Point said it received messages from 62,000 students interested in starting a new chapter or getting involved with one.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that our club has kind of become a beacon for conservatives,\u201d a Turning Point chapter member told IDS<\/em>, Indiana University at Bloomington\u2019s campus newspaper. \u201cSo, after his death, more people showed up, more people got involved, and it was really nice to kind of see a scene in the way people wanted to get involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012, with the mission of \u201cto identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.\u201d<\/p>\n He gained notoriety in conservative circles by traveling to college campuses across the country, challenging students to prove wrong his conservative stances on topics such as race, gender, abortion and immigration. <\/p>\n On Sept. 10, Kirk was speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University when a gunman fatally shot him in the neck. After his death, Trump and his allies moved to canonize Kirk as an exemplar of civic debate\u2014and called to punish anyone who publicly disagreed. Numerous colleges and universities have since suspended or fired faculty and staff who criticized Kirk for his political views.<\/p>\n Although some faculty and students have objected to new Turning Point chapters, the students growing the organization insist they\u2019re committed to considering all perspectives. <\/p>\n \u201cYou have a place here, you’ll always have a place here,\u201d Jack Henning, president of Indiana University\u2019s Turning Point chapter, told IDS<\/em>. \u201cWe don\u2019t discriminate against any viewpoints at all, we debate them. That\u2019s what American democracy was built upon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed Sept. 10. Trent Nelson\/The Salt Lake Tribune\/Getty Images News\/Getty Images Three months after Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination, the footprint of the right-wing youth organization he founded continues to grow on college campuses. This week, Turning Point USA chapters at both Indiana University Bloomington and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2266,12240,3831,393,291],"class_list":{"0":"post-37956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-growing","9":"tag-membership","10":"tag-points","11":"tag-student","12":"tag-turning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}