Young Democrats, Turning Point USA plan debate at UT-Tyler campus
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The president of the Young Democrats at the University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler), he initiated the idea of collaborating with Turning Point USA for an event in hopes of promoting bipartisanship in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“I actually floated the idea that we could have some kind of event or debate. And this was right after the Charlie Kirk assassination, so I thought that would foster some bipartisanship and maybe keep us from being so polarized,” political science freshman Marcus Emmanuel told Fox News Digital. he said.
“We were talking to the Young Democrats on our campus and they were very open to a discussion, which is very exciting. They were really looking forward to working with us,” Reese Cooper, president of UT-Tyler’s TPUSA chapter, told Fox News Digital.
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The president of the Young Democrats at the University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler), he initiated the idea of collaborating with Turning Point USA for an event in hopes of promoting bipartisanship in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Kirk was killed while speaking on the Utah Valley University campus on September 10.
Kirk built a following by touring the country to engage college students in culture-war issues such as gender ideology, racial divisions, and the virtues of Christian and American values in general.
He left behind a wife, Erika, and two young children. Since his death, the organization he founded, Turning Point USA, skyrocketed to fame and received great support.
Emmanuel said TPUSA should not be delegitimized and that he hopes to persuade people to join their side after the debate.
“I would like to reference this by saying that the purpose is not to legitimize what TPUSA stands for. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the segment of society that agrees with the ideology is too large to be isolated or ignored,” he added.
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Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking on the Utah Valley University campus on September 10. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
He continued: “The only way to combat this is to engage in dialogue with them. So my goal in the debate is to discredit the message through facts and logic.”
Emmanuel said Jonathan Roncancio, vice president of UT-Tyler’s TPUSA chapter, is in his general group of friends. They chatted in the library about the TPUSA chapter that had recently started on campus.
“Our hope with Turning Point is to educate and mobilize people, but also to create a community on the college campus,” Roncancio told Fox News Digital.
He added: “Our goal is to create a conservative community where people can come and discuss their ideas. We actually want to create a free marketplace of ideas where people can use and discuss anything they want to discuss. We don’t want to just welcome an idea. Our goal was to create discussion and debate and just host good debate.”
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Charlie Kirk built a following by touring the country to engage college students in culture war issues such as gender ideology, racial divisions, and the merits of Christian and American values in general. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Emmanuel said the date of the event is not certain, but it is expected to take place in November.
“I thought the temperature was too high, so I wanted to use this as an opportunity to lower the temperature and for both parties to realize that even if we have disagreements, the other party is human,” Emmanuel said.
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“I don’t think the President of the United States has done an effective job of lowering the temperature or telling both sides to lower the temperatures,” he said.
