By Rhea Choudhary | Staff Writer
While much of campus has been affected by advertising for two events, TPUSA’s tour and All Are Neighbors, the majority of campus will operate as usual Wednesday night.
Several students’ responses to the events reveal a disconnect between institutional attention and student interest, a disconnect that may negatively affect other events across campus.
With the TPUSA event originally featuring Donald Trump Jr. before being replaced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, it has received weeks of promotion through Instagram, flyers passed out in central student-use areas and campus outreach. Around the same time, All Are Neighbors, an alternative event option for students, was scheduled earlier in the evening, adding to what The Lariat’s Editorial Board described as “fragmented” campus dialogue.
However, despite the attention TPUSA and All Are Neighbors have attracted, some students have still stated they have no plans to attend either.
For Cordova, Tenn., freshman Logan Jones, his decision comes from how he views the TPUSA organization.
“It’s being promoted as this sort of free speech event, but I just feel like the speakers they are having come in and what the organization is built on is very divisive,” Jones said. “Nothing productive really has come out of it, at least from what I’ve seen.”
Jones also added that he thinks the university is placing a large emphasis on both events, something he doesn’t understand.
“Most students don’t even really seem interested in going from what I’ve seen,” Jones said. “I genuinely don’t understand why it’s such a big thing in the school’s eyes.”
Other students recognized that their absence from attendance is less due to their ideologies and more to personal comfort and safety concerns. Southlake freshman Grace Kuruvilla explained that although the event has been widely advertised and talked about, the publicity itself has not motivated her to attend either event Wednesday evening.
“I’ve seen a lot of advertising, and I just never felt obligated to go,” Kuruvilla said. “It’s also more of a safety thing. I don’t really feel comfortable going with everything that happened recently with [TPUSA].”
Similarly, Birmingham, Ala., Laney Thompson said worries about safety outweighed any interest in attending the events. Her decision wasn’t a political one — simply dependent on an attention to her own safety.
“I just feel like not going is the fact that [TPUSA] recently contributed to an incident resulting in big safety concerns … I just don’t really want to go and be at the event,” Thompson said. “I wouldn’t go no matter which organization it was, just because of safety.”
That same schedule of events is also impacting other student programming. Attendance to a variety of events on campus may be affected by the two major events, including two student recitals at the Glennis McCrary Music Building, the STEAM Center’s Big Bug Bash and the Annual Ethics and Culture Lecture in Armstrong Browning Library.
In fact, one senior music major was scheduled to perform her recital at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, but it was moved to May 3 because of conflicts with other major events.
The overlap of political events with previously scheduled student programming prompts further discussion about how campus priorities are selected and what may be lost in the selection process.
The TPUSA event itself has already undergone changes that added to its visibility. Donald Trump Jr. will no longer attend the Baylor stop, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stepping in alongside Tom Homan and commentator Benny Johnson. No official reason was given for the change, although promotional materials featuring Trump Jr. were still passed out by students on campus shortly before the announcement.
