By Isabella LoCicero | Guest Contributor, Class of 2025
Baylor University will host a stop on the campus tour of Turning Point USA, a national political organization that is known for staging confrontational political events at universities. While supporters say these events at universities promote free speech and bring conservative ideas onto campus, Baylor students should be asking a deeper question: are these tours actually to foster dialogue, or are they designed to turn universities into a stage for political theatre?
Turning Point USA has built a national brand around viral campus moments. It’s speakers and organizers film interactions with students, often butcher arguments through editing during heated exchanges, and distribute them widely on social media. When you actually absorb this content, however, you will notice that this is not a practice in persuasion or intellectual engagement. Instead, the incentive is a confrontation specifically meant to avoid substantive argumentation. These exchanges between speakers and students can generate millions of views online, reinforcing culture war narratives about higher education.
This dynamic introduces a huge problem for Baylor. Campuses like ours have been stereotyped as strictly conservative due to our private, Christian community. But Baylor’s political life does provide spaces where students test ideas, challenge assumptions, and learn from one another through multiple different avenues. But when outside political organizations arrive with cameras and an audience to engage, Baylor students risk becoming props in political content that lacks nuance. They have provided no “other side” – because thoughtful discussion is not the goal. Content is. Their speakers are ironically the least “pro-mundo” people that we could host!
There is also a more immediate issue at hand. Turning Point USA has decided to bring three immigration extremists and platform them. Given the importance of international students to Baylor’s growing student population, the message will be very clear: Baylor would rather allow Turning Point USA to film on campus than guarantee safety for its international community. All of the speakers mentioned are notoriously pro-ICE, which has certifiably deported Americans based on racial profiling. This presents a huge, obvious risk to the Black and Brown students on campus. As someone with many international friends, I would hope that Baylor students recognize the danger that they are putting other students in, and not attend this extremist event.
