Here In Montana Corvallis High School Approves Turning Point USA Chapter
Guest Post By Bill LaCroix
On December 9, the Corvallis, MT, school board voted unanimously, in the interest of “vigorous debate,” to approve a “Club America” chapter on their high school campus. “Club America” is part of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the late Charlie Kirk’s explicit, well-funded scheme to insert TPUSA’s brand of White Christian Nationalist (read: hate) speech into every American high school.
But before getting to that, it is worth highlighting some of Kirk’s own words so there can be no mistake about his beliefs and his agenda for the future.
The late Charlie Kirk, in his own words:
- “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term.”
- “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
- Joe Biden should “be put in prison and/ or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”
- “You (non-white women) had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
- “Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years.”
- “MLK was awful. OK? He’s not a good person.”
- “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
- “Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to illegals and foreign nations, while Gen Z has to pinch pennies just so that they can never own a home, never marry, and work until they die, childless.”
- “Return America to its British roots.”
- “Prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact.”
- “The West is the best because of Christianity. For America to be great, we must remain majority Christian.”
- “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of…some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
Ever since Mr. Kirk’s shooting death on September 10, there has been a concerted state and national effort from the Right to make a martyr of him in the name of (apparently) the White Christian Nationalist cause. It’s reasonable for the average parent, voter and taxpayer, who normally assumes school staff’s first priority is to create a safe learning environment for all students, to now assume that public school staff (and possibly the Montana School Boards Association) have been warned off of any criticism of the late Mr. Kirk now that he’s dead and in the process of being canonized.
When asked about the legality of allowing a volatile, explicitly-hate-centered group to operate within a high school, the Montana School Board Association (MTSBA), which gives legal advice to Montana’s public school districts, opined that, if a high school student wants to start a Ku Klux Klan Club on campus, the school would be defenseless to stop it under Title VIII of the Education for Economic Security Act (the so-called 1984 Equal Access Act).
Well, notwithstanding MTSBA’s revealing post-shooting interpretation of “equal access” or the Corvallis School Board’s take on “vigorous debate,” there are some huge gaps you could drive a “Trump train” through in their deer-in-the-headlights acquiescence to the martyring of such a man or organization that have yet, to my knowledge, to be explored, discussed or explained:
Why, for instance, did the school board need to “approve” or “disapprove” a Club America chapter at all, if the law is so pat that even the KKK can get access to the school’s copy machine? The obvious answer is they didn’t, and their vote was theatre.
Voting unanimously to allow an after-school KKK (or a “Club America”) chapter to operate on campus is not their job, as defined by Title XIII of the 1984 Education for Economic Security Act, or any other reasonably-interpreted law. The issue before them was actually a concerned community asking them to refuse to give a divisive and harmful national group a foot in Corvallis High’s door. Protecting their charges from hate speech and its consequences, at least in this writer’s humble opinion, is, and I’d bet MTSBA’s in their clearer moments, would agree.
But if Title VIII (which was originally lobbied for by powerful “Christian” groups who wanted to insert school prayer on campuses) is the hill the Corvallis trustees (and maybe MTSBA?) want to embarrass themselves on, there are still unanswered questions that should concern any thoughtful parent, taxpayer or both.
According to Title VIII, the club needs an accredited school employee (not the janitor or lunch lady) to sponsor it, which, as of this writing, it does not have. The original sponsor backed out when they found out what TPUSA was about. So…no sponsor, no club, right? Why the vote on allowing it then? Title VIII also specifies that:
- The group is not disruptive.
- Persons of the community that are not part of the school may not “direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend meetings.”
- School officials preserve and have the right to monitor meetings.
- Officials preserve and have the right to require all clubs and/or groups to follow a set of guidelines.
- Persons of the community that are not part of the school may not “direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend meetings.”
So, if the Equal Access Act is indeed the aforementioned hill for our public education professionals, two points arise from these requirements. First is a question. How is Corvallis planning to make sure the “club” adheres to these rules when TPUSA’s mission specifically aims to break at least half of them? Corvallis Superintendent Pete Joseph assured attendees at the school board meeting several times, “I’m going to be heavily invested in the agenda items and topics that are brought up—it’s going to stay in that room. If it gets outside that room and people are feeling threatened, it will be shut down immediately.” Just the tone of that statement makes this writer pretty sure that Mr. Joseph is well aware of what he doesn’t want “outside that room.” which makes the statement meaningless. How, for instance, is Mr. Joseph going to “monitor” testosterone-charged teenage boys parroting the late Mr. Kirk’s beliefs about how women should “submit” to men and how contraceptives are not “biblical,” and then assure the community that a teenage girl won’t be impregnated against her will in the back seat of a Subaru by a Club America “true believer?” That’s like the 1920’s argument that the KKK was just a “civic service” organization teaching “leadership skills” and any untoward things they did on their own is…well…just unfortunate. (If you don’t believe that’s what the KKK was promoted as and let off the hook to do a hundred years ago, read a history book.)
Second is a call to activism to citizens concerned about TurningPoint USA being allowed into Corvallis High: Right now there is no sponsor. Therefore, no club, or at least there shouldn’t be. Is there? Better be a squeaky wheel and find out. Then, if and when it does materialize (it hasn’t yet), be there, in person, to monitor it closely to make sure school staff are on top of holding them to the non-disruptive guidelines of, say, a chess club.
