Bomb-sniffing dogs, police officers and sheriff’s deputies patrolled Baylor University’s campus Wednesday evening, preparing for a disruption that never came.
Hundreds of students split up to attend two dueling events that drew attention around the state. Turning Point USA’s tour stop featuring “border czar” Tom Homan and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton went head to head with the progressive, student-led “All Are Neighbors” event less than 1,000 feet away.
The events produced no noticeable flareups on the ground. Many Baylor seniors were busy posing for graduation photos by fountains and live oak trees. But storms were crackling in the upper atmosphere of Baylor’s administration. The university is facing a possible rupture with the Baptist General Convention of Texas for permitting gay Christian speakers at “All Are Neighbors.”
Meanwhile, the university denied Turning Point USA’s suggestion that it sabotaged the conservative event that evening by denying the entrance to the non-Baylor public.
Turning Point sent notice just hours before the event to non-Baylor people who had signed up for the event’s waitlist, saying it was reserved only for Baylor students, faculty and staff.
The email blamed the decision on Baylor, but university officials told the Bridge that the event had been originally approved for a Baylor audience plus 125 invited outside guests.
Turning Point USA also announced Wednesday morning that it was barring news media, including the Baylor student newspaper, from the event.
The day before, headliner Donald Trump Jr. had dropped out of the event and was replaced with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a candidate for U.S. Senate. While Baylor policy bars political campaigning, the Baylor Lariat on Wednesday quoted university officials as saying that other Senate candidates will now be allowed to speak on campus.
Baylor officials reported 438 ticket swipes for the event – less than a quarter of the 2,200-seat capacity of Waco Hall and far less than the group anticipated.
The “All Are Neighbors” event brought in 270 attendees to the fifth floor of Baylor’s Cashion building, according to university ticket scans, enough that later guests chose to stand or sit on the ground.
Scenes from the TPUSA queue
Live Oak Classical School junior Josh Balch of Waco is president of the student chapter of Turning Point USA at his campus. Balch and his friends, Jake Thompson and Eli Daniel, had signed up for the event but found they could not get in.
“I try and let my Christianity, my faith, fuel my politics,” Balch said. “And I think Turning Point has a really good job displaying that. I think Charlie Kirk was a really good example of that. I love being politically active, and so I’m around trying to find a way in, but it’s not looking great. I’ve had tickets for months.”
Two adult men who had traveled from East Texas with a full-sized cross were dismayed by news of the ticket cancellation and decided to pray for students instead.
Baylor finance junior Daniel Six, of Dallas-Fort Worth, lined up with friends ahead of the Turning Point USA event. He came out because he agrees with TPUSA’s values.
“We were all big fans of Charlie before he was murdered, and we want to come out here and support both Turning Point and the values that Charlie stood for,” Six said.
Teresa Danforth, a longtime TPUSA volunteer, traveled 125 miles to the event from Dripping Springs in hopes of getting in, only to find out that she not could enter an auditorium with plenty of open seats.
Sitting on the Burleson Quadrangle observing the progressive event from a distance, Danforth said the restrictions were frustrating, but the trip wasn’t wasted.
“No, just to show up and talk to kids and hear their viewpoints and why they’re here, and support them and stand up for what you believe in, no matter what – it was worth it.”
“Neighbors” event makes history
The “All Are Neighbors” ticketed event at the Cashion building featured Kelley Robinson, president of Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group; Interfaith Alliance president Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush; and the Rev. Susie Heyward, a Minneapolis-based minister and immigrant advocate.
It was perhaps the highest-profile demonstration of LGBTQ+ identity in Baylor’s 181-year history, a fact that clearly registered among the speakers and the crowd. The Texas Baptists in previous weeks applied pressure on Baylor’s administration to shut the event down.
“I just flew in from Washington D.C. … And all over the country people are talking about you!” Robinson told attendees. “We have to have faith that all of us are made in God’s image, and there’s no asterisks on the ‘all.’ ”
The speakers webbed past and present political struggles into motifs of democratic action. Applause turned to standing ovations at points, as immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights were recast through scripture.
JW LaStrape, a Baylor senior and one of the lead organizers for “All Are Neighbors,” asked for a show of hands for faculty, staff and students in the room and found roughly equal shares of the three.
The speakers included Baylor writing professor and author Greg Garrett, who is on the Turning Point “Professor Watchlist.”
Before taking part in a prayer vigil that evening, he mulled over what the event signified in relation to Turning Point’s tour, and to the university in general.
“I’m a big free speech person, I’m big on academic freedom … but I also think it may be a mistake to invite organizations onto your campus that are actively working for your downfall,” Garrett said, citing TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk and his book, “The College Scam.”
But Garrett said the event’s full significance was not possible to grasp within the frame of progressive students opposing a Turning Point event that night.
“For the 36 years I’ve been here, there has always been this powerful tension between our conservative Baptist heritage and our drive to be a research one university,” he said, referring to the university’s 2021 designation. “This event tonight is a recognition that it is possible for Baylor to be something other than a conservative Baptist college.”
Baylor religion graduate student Nadia Andrelinas decided to protest the speakers at the Turning Point USA event on Wednesday. As a protester, Andrelinas was allowed in an “expressive activity area” set up near the Burleson Quadrangle.
“I’m part of the Baylor community, and I heard about the speakers that were coming, and because they’re associated with ICE, I don’t support what they’ve been doing in our country, how they’ve been treating people baseline, and I don’t like that presence here on my campus,” Andrelinas said.
Baylor education junior Stephanie Ordanez of Houston said the progressive event was important for students of color.
“I think it’s important for minorities to have some event like this, where they feel included, appreciated, valued and more importantly, loved,” Ordanez said.
NoZe for free speech
Baylor’s NoZe Brotherhood, the century-old secret society that exists to lampoon self-seriousness at Baylor, marched past the event sites in full regalia with fake noses and beards. They carried absurdist signs, including “Turn the Frogs Gayer.”
Stopped for a quick interview, members took turns making pronouncements about Baylor and free speech, contradicting each other for fun.
“OK, we may be under slight sanctions at the moment, but every other year, we keep free speech alive and well at Baylor,” one female member said. “Baylor needs us.”
Just off campus beneath the I-35 overpass, Waco residents organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and other local activist groups staged a separate demonstration to coincide with those on campus.
The 30 to 40 people gathered there shouted for Tom Homan’s expulsion from Waco. Many rejected the notion that Turning Point USA had any role to play in elevating civil discourse at Baylor. “Turning Point USA is a hate group,” Kaleb Blain, a Waco pitmaster with a large online following.
“Sure, it’s free speech, but it’s hate speech, and we’re hosting them.”
But the national headlines surrounding the events and the passions within them may not speak for the majority of Baylor’s 20,000-odd students. A Good Faith Media survey of more than 24 students on campus that day found only three who planned on attending either.
Reporter Raquel Villatoro and Editor-in-Chief J.B. Smith contributed to this report.
