Tensions high ahead of right-wing rally on UW campus
The student group bringing Charlie Kirk to UW is led by a student with white supremacist ties. The university president warned students to protest peacefully.
Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk plans to host a rally Thursday at the University of Wyoming.
Tickets for the general public are sold out. The auditorium will almost certainly be packed. And Kirk will be stepping foot into a community that recently demonstrated its willingness to rage against provocative right-wing figures.
Ahead of Kirk’s planned rally, UW is urging its students not to disrupt the event, with a campuswide email from UW President Seidel reminding them that “the university plays a unique role by providing a neutral forum for the deliberation and debate of public issues.”
“This can take the form of activists speaking and demonstrating at public places on campus, such as Simpson Plaza and spaces in the Wyoming Union; controversial speakers invited to campus by student organizations and others; and other activities,” Seidel writes. “Feeling uncomfortable or offended — and, in many cases, even feeling unsafe — is not, in and of itself, grounds for stopping speech.”
The president highlighted “the university’s commitment to institutional neutrality, free expression and constructive dialogue,” while pointing to a Statement of Principles UW finalized in 2023.
Seidel did not mention Kirk by name, referring to him only as “a conservative speaker with strong views.”
Turning Point, at UW and beyond
Charlie Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA, an organization that aims to take back universities from the leftist or Marxist forces who allegedly run them. He also hosts a podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, which is currently seventh most popular in the news category on Apple Podcasts.
Turning Point funnels money into student government elections on university and college campuses and maintains a “Professor Watchlist” — a website that publishes names and photos of university instructors it accuses of pushing “leftist propaganda.”
The Turning Point chapter at UW is helmed by Gabe Saint — a student leader who helped craft the university’s Statement of Principles and who earned the endorsement of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus in his unsuccessful bid for student body president last year.
In June, a Laramie Reporter investigation revealed Saint regularly engaged with white supremacist, antisemitic and other hateful content online while publicly claiming to value “grace, unity and charity.” Saint said he engaged with the content because it amused him and not because he agreed with it.
Saint had dozens of white supremacist “mutuals” — accounts he followed and who followed him in turn.
Freedom Caucus Chair John Bear said he was unaware of Saint’s online behavior before the Reporter uncovered it. Bear did not denounce the antisemitic content.
As of this semester, Saint is still an ASUW senator and remains the chair of Turning Point at UWYO, often serving as the organization’s face in social media posts.
Kirk is not the first national activist Turning Point has brought to campus. Early organizers of the student group brought Dennis Prager to UW in 2017. In the fall of 2023, a more formal iteration of the student group brought Riley Gaines, an anti-trans activist, to campus.
Gaines delivered a speech misrepresenting the science, discourse and rules surrounding transgender participation in women’s sports. She took mean-spirited cheap shots at the appearance of individual trans people and promoted Christianity as an antidote to the “godlessness” underpinning calls for transgender acceptance.
While some students walked out of Gaines’ speech, organized opposition was minimal. In the time since her visit, however, Laramie has regained some of its propensity for protest.
Now is the winter of our protest
Laramie, a purple island in the red sea of Wyoming, has been loudly petitioning its government for a redress of grievances.
Twice this month, several hundred protestors gathered along Grand Avenue to rail against the Trump Administration, its hardline immigration activities and the dramatic federal cuts affecting university research, national parks, international aid and more.
But Laramigos were perhaps never louder in recent history than during Rep. Harriet Hageman’s visit in March.
Wyoming’s lone representative in the U.S. House presided over a raucous town hall attended by hundreds. The crowd was outraged by Hageman’s praise for the federal cuts — many of which are hitting home in Wyoming — and by her dismissive answers to several questions.
At one point, she chided the audience for being enamored by federal spending. At another point, an audience member asked the elected representative what she would do to protect transgender and nonbinary rights.
“I don’t even know what that means,” Hageman replied, inspiring the audience’s loudest outburst of the night.
Laramie has a storied history surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to shout down flippant answers to related concerns.
Kirk opposes same-sex marriage and believes gender-affirming care should be outlawed. He justifies both positions with explicitly religious reasoning, arguing the idea of church-state separation is a “fiction” invented by “secular humanists.”
In the last three years, Wyoming has passed a mountain of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, dramatically altering life for its young trans residents and driving away trans adults who had previously planned to grow old in the Equality State.
As if the university president hasn't already damaged the university enough with his own actions...
You do realize Laramie voted red right?