UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, Utah — Less than one month after Charlie Kirk was killed on Utah Valley University’s campus, TPUSA was back in Utah. This time, they visited Utah State University.
Despite the tragedy of the turning point’s last event, organizers said things are secure.
“A lot of people did come to us like ‘there’s going to be good security right? like we’re going to be ok right.' So a lot of reassuring but there was so many people on campus that were interested, I’ll hand them a flyer and they’ll say I already signed up, I’ll be there,” USU TPUSA Chapter President, Kaitlin Griffiths said.
USU does not take official positions on topics unrelated to its core mission, but it did state that free speech is the foundation of higher education.
At the school’s Heravi Peace Institute they work to give students the skills to transform conflict into peace.
Austin Knuppe, the director of the Peace Institute, said they had a Braver Campus dialogue last week to showcase just that.
“We had 75 students come together in a discussion format to talk about how our campus community should engage with controversial ideas, so the students were able to voice their experience of what happened at UVU and how they want to navigate that moving forward,” Knuppe said.
Despite the recent tone of political discourse, Kaitlin Griffiths, said the purpose for these campus visits is to encourage people to agree to disagree.
“I’ve always said i think that debates is one of the things that’s really lacking especially in our younger voters, our college age kids, it’s really hard to have a conversation with somebody they disagree with. and that’s something that Charlie really stood by was having conversations with those you disagree with,” Griffiths said.
Knuppe concurred.
“We welcome people to lean into that,” Knuppe said. “Practice healthy conflict and engage without being confrontational. so we welcome, as a public university, people on campus to discuss ideas.”
