by Christian Cintron ’28 on October 30, 2025
News
On Wednesday, Oct. 22, Grace Pierson ’26, the chair of Student Congress’s Committee on Advocacy, held a meeting open to all members of the campus community in Moore Hall 118 regarding the proposal of a Turning Point USA chapter at Providence College. Attendees of the meeting included representatives from Student Congress, the Board of Multicultural Student Affairs (BMSA), SHEPARD, and other interested PC students.
Turning Point USA is a nonprofit organization co-founded by conservative political activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September. Their official website proclaims, “We are committed to identifying, educating, training, and organizing students to promote freedom.” The overarching goal of the organization is to educate students nationwide on conservative values and uplift civic engagement in youth, grounded in a patriotic attitude and readiness to act. A movement largely rooted in traditionalism, Turning Point USA provides resources for both college campuses and high schools to promote these values on school grounds, including open applications for grants and providing guest speakers from their Speakers’ Bureau.
Pierson made it evident that the meeting did not have a specific agenda, but rather was an open forum for students to express their concerns about the proposed chapter, which could then be brought up at the pending club’s presentation to Student Congress. A document was maintained listing these concerns, and attendees voiced items that they wanted to be added to the list. The two primary talking points that are intended to be raised regard the club’s disposition as a non-partisan organization and the national group’s Professor Watchlist, with the goal of documenting college professors who impose leftist values on students. The meeting’s attendees questioned the chapter’s presentation as non-partisan when the national organization infamously has conservative implications. They were also skeptical of the organization’s connection to the Professor Watchlist and its consequences for PC professors, but the proposed chapter rejects involvement with the Professor Watchlist.
Pierson asserted that the presence of this chapter on campus could impact the experience of marginalized communities attending PC, describing the ideals of Kirk and other Turning Point USA founders as “white Christian nationalism.” She is chiefly concerned with the implications for professors due to the aforementioned Watchlist, believing that the potential for persecution could bring a culture of negativity to campus, stating, “everybody is negatively affected by that.” She also expanded on the distress regarding the chapter being presented as non-partisan, which was emphasized by the proposed chapter’s executive board when they met with Student Congress’s Committee on Clubs and Organizations on Wednesday, Oct. 15, arguing that DEI initiatives would suffer as a result. She discussed the optics of on-campus initiatives proportionally, noting they are “already being labeled as far-left” and will “be viewed as way farther left by comparison.”
The chapter will present to Student Congress on Tuesday, Nov. 4, and elected members of Student Congress are tentatively set to vote on the chapter’s passage a week later on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Both meetings will be open to the student body.