January 1, Texas Campus Tensions Rise After Kirk Killing

Wyatt’s Take

• Young Democrats and TPUSA at UT-Tyler plan a campus debate after Charlie Kirk’s death.
• Both sides hope dialogue can address tensions, but no one is backing down.
• The debate aims to bring students together, but strong differences remain.

At the University of Texas at Tyler, student groups are coming together after Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was killed on another campus. The Young Democrats president proposed a public debate with TPUSA, hoping it would help ease campus tensions.

“I essentially suggested the idea that we do some sort of event or debate. And this was right after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, so I also thought it would breed some level of bipartisanship and maybe stop us from being so polarized,” said Marcus Emmanuel, a political science student.

Reese Cooper of UT-Tyler’s TPUSA chapter responded, “We’ve been talking with the Young Democrats on our campus, and they’ve been very open to having a debate, which is very exciting. They’ve been really looking forward to working with us.”

Kirk was killed during an event at Utah Valley University in September. His death drew massive support to Turning Point USA, the group he started to promote conservative values on campuses nationwide.

TPUSA’s vice president, Jonathan Roncancio, shared, “Our hope with Turning Point is to just educate and activate people, as well as create a community on the college campus.” He added, “Our goal is to create a conservative community where people can come and discuss ideas. We really just want to make a free market of ideas that people can use and debate anything that they want to debate. We don’t want to just welcome one idea. Our goal was to create discussion and debate and just host good discussions.”

Emmanuel said the debate does not mean endorsing TPUSA’s beliefs. He hopes open discussion will help sway opinions. He explained, “I kind of just want to reference it by saying that the goal isn’t to legitimize what TPUSA stands for. But rather, it’s more of an acknowledgment that the faction in society that agrees with the ideology is too large to isolate or ignore.”

He added, “The only way in which you can combat it is by engaging in dialogue with them. So my goal for the debate is to go about discrediting the message through facts and logic.”

Though the debate date is not set, plans are in place for it to take place in November. Emmanuel also voiced his concern about high emotions, saying, “I thought that the temperature was way too high, so I wanted to kind of use it as an opportunity to also turn down the temperature and for both sides to realize that the other side is human, even if there’s disagreements between us.”

He criticized leaders in Washington, “I don’t think the president of the United States is doing an effective job at kind of turning down the temperature or telling both sides to turn down the temperatures.”

If you want to see real change, speak up where you stand, and keep the debate focused on the facts.

Wyatt Matters

When college kids on both sides look for common ground after tragedy, that’s the kind of spirit this country was built on. It shows we still value honest debate, even if we don’t agree, and that’s something Middle America needs more of today.

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