TPUSA Q&A

Q: Can you start by giving a brief overview of your organization?

A: Essentially Turning Point USA is a club that focuses on the physical responsibility of students. We’re considered a non-partisan organization, however; we do have more of a libertarian lean so what kind of diversifies us from College Republicans is that we’re more focused on the economic factors of the government compared to social issues, so we really don’t take a stance on social issues. We also don’t affiliate with any specific candidates. I think lots of Turning Point members would consider themselves Republican or conservative but essentially what we do is teach kids the values of conservative policies and hope they can implement those into their everyday lives and take it beyond college.   

Q: Who you are and what you all stand for or try to do on campus?

A: So I’m the president of Turning Point right now. Collectively I believe we stand as an organization that’s not interested in fighting with people or taking these strong political stances. We’re really focused mostly on educating students and teaching them why the policies we believe in could really be implemented into the system and be positive changes that kids could see beyond college because a lot of the times you’ll see that college students are fiscally conservative and socially liberal and that’s what I am and I’m the president of a conservative club, but it’s about letting students know that these conservative values and public policies can be really key and really awesome for the future of the country.  

Q: How does your group encourage political activity on campus?

A: Our group does a lot of different things. This year we facilitated an on-campus debate against College of Democrats, which was really cool. We didn’t have any winners or losers, it was really just to hear the other peoples sides and talk things out. Of course things got a little frisky, but for the most part, it was really cool. We also hold on-campus events, such as the free speech ball. If you ever see someone walking around with a ginormous beach ball that is taller than most humans, that is me. It’s like a giant beach ball and we let people write whatever they want because again we like to consider ourselves non-partisan and free speech is not a partisan issue that everyone should fight for and so we have been advocating a lot for that and we help students kind of get involved with that on campus.

Q: Have you seen a change in your membership since the election?

A: Turning point actually just affiliated when the election was going on last fall, which is really unfortunate because again I just don’t believe in taking a step back on your stance, I think you should power through. So the previous staff wasn’t as dedicated as our current staff is, not to say they were bad, just they weren’t as dedicated and so I came in and stepped in. We definitely seen membership improvement. There was one stable member last year and then when I took in over in the fall, we had a solid 15 people that come to everything. We’ve gotten people involved. I’ve connected with 300 plus students about the organization. I meet people for coffee and I’ve definitely seen a significant improvement in people wanting to join a club and wanting to find people that also hold their conservative values because I think that a lot of students are conservative, they’re just nervous to go out and bluntly say it. Which I understand, we’re in a culture where being politically correct is really important and it’s kind of nice to find a group of people that are not afraid to talk about their conservative values openly and so I think turning point has been kind of that liaison between Michigan State and finding a home with your conservative values here.

Q: What do you want students to know about your organization?

A: So we want everyone to know that TPUSA isn’t looking to fight people or fight Antifa. We’re just out here to educate people and why we think conservatives values are awesome and we hope to encourage students to want to get involved and listen to us even if it’s not something that they’re interested in and that they don’t hold conservative values close to them. Just coming to a meeting and understanding why people think in a different fashion than you do is really important. So even if we aren’t getting you involved and turning you into a conservative, we hope that we can educate people beyond just conservatives, but people of all political interest or even just getting people involved in politics. I know that myself, personally being aware and having this position in this club has helped to grow awareness of politics to students that never would have thought they be interested in politics. They would come up to me and be like “Hey Chrissy, I saw this on the news and I thought of you” and it was cool and I kind of felt like I got a little more involved just by doing those small things or just by signing up for turning point emails, I feel a little bit more involved in politics. If I can make that impact and if turning point can make that impact on even just a handful of people, then I know I’m doing my job right and I know the club is succeeding on campus.     

Q: What is the best event that TPUSA put on?

A: I think the best event that we had was the discussion/debate with the College of Democrats. I thought it was a really cool opportunity to open the floor up to talking about other issues that we really disagree on and issues that we actually really agree on. We actually got to one point where we were talking about private prisons and it was honestly comical because we were going back and forth and we realized we actually agreed on the issue and it was just kind of awkward because we were running the timeout and we obviously need to debate each other, but we kind of agree, so it was kind of cool to see where there are a lot of points in the world where republicans and democrats or conservatives and liberals really agree on policy. It’s just that right now we’re in a world where you don’t want to say you agree with somebody else. So I think that was our best event because it was kind of one of those things where it’s like the other side didn’t need to say that they agreed with us, you could just tell that they were agreeing with us and it was kind of cool to be like hey there’s more in common than you think. We’re politically involved students and that’s really cool because it’s really hard to get people involved in politics in general, especially in college when there’s a thousand other things to be interested in. So yeah I think that was probably our coolest event, my favorite part of turning point so far.