By Emma Brisk / USF ZNews
TAMPA – Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a non-profit organization that advocates for conservative students’ politics, brought his “American Comeback Tour” to the University of South Florida to debate the politically concerned youth.
Kirk tells hundreds of university students their education is a scam. If they must go to college, “go to the least expensive option available and get through as quickly as possible.” Kirk dropped out of community college but credits his knowledge to reading constantly and working for himself.
Micheal Mandzick, a conservative student agrees with Kirk that college is a scam. Affected by high tuition costs, Mandzick feels he pays for general education courses that won’t help his career. “Letting [students] take on generational debt at eighteen just because it’s so pushed on us, our generation, leads me to believe that [college] is a scam, in some cases,” said Mandzick.
Some conservative students feel their coursework is graded differently for expressing conservative views. One student told Kirk he got a poor assignment grade for claiming the gender pay gap is a myth. “This proves my point that college is a scam,” said Kirk. “You should not be forced to go into debt and study things that are not true.”
Opposed to Kirk and other conservative students’ concerns with higher education, a bachelor’s degree makes you more likely to be employed and have a higher salary than high school graduates. Kirk’s Turning Point USA has a project maintaining a “professor watchlist” – a list of professors who he thinks teach radical ideologies and discriminate against conservative students.
The government is moving closer to abolishing the Department of Education, which Kirk believes is the only way to keep education politically unbiased. “Anything that starts in D.C. with a good intention will be taken over by the can[cer] – the woke tumor-wood,” said Kirk. “Even if it has a really good intent.”
The Department of Education helps to fund education, enforces civil rights laws such as Title VI and gathers nationwide education data. It’s at the state’s power to establish the schools, decide their curriculum, determine enrollment and graduation requirements.
Kirk used religion to back up his pro-life beliefs based on readings of the Torah, Exodus 20:13, which states “Thou should not kill.” Amounting aborting a fetus to killing a life, Kirk compared liberals’ stance on abortion to the death penalty. “Bleeding heart liberals will say they feel more sorry for the person on death row than for the baby in the womb that never had a chance to live,” said Kirk.
Students of all political backgrounds debated Kirk and left-leaning participants were given harsh feedback from the crowd, with Kirk even asking the crowd not to boo a student with a pro-choice view on abortion, “Be nice guys, seriously.”
Despite harsh reactions from the crowd, the University Police Department’s public information officer Micheal Lavelle said no altercations occurred at the event, “it was an enjoyable event.”
Political activists usually spark controversy with students and require heavy police presence at on-campus events. Since USF’s pro-Palestine protest and the polarizing 2024 presidential election, most students avoid discussing political topics openly for fear of repercussions from their peers and the university.
