On October 29th, I went to Crescent Valley’s Turning Point USA chapter. This club has garnered attention and stirred controversy. However, with the many questions and misconceptions about CV’s TPUSA, I decided to check out the club for myself to see what it actually was. 

TPUSA, or more accurately Club America, is led by sophomore Alice Bowdle and junior Emma Middlestadt. Club America is a division of TPUSA that focuses on engaging high schoolers with conservative values. At the meeting I attended, there were 5 total members. 

The students started the meeting by going over TPUSA’s core values. The goal of TPUSA/Club America was to work on and advocate for Christian and conservative values. They believed in limited government control, a free market, and the duty to uphold constitutional values such as freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Most of the members identify themselves as Christians.  

Alice, the club president, emphasized that everyone is welcome to join the club, even if you aren’t Christian or are conservative. She encouraged students of the CV community to sit in the club and listen to their values. Because it is a Christian-based club, she said, they care about everyone regardless of their gender or values. Their goal was to debate ideas, not people. Interestingly, TPUSA holds meetings on Wednesdays, a day when another prominent Christian-based club, FCA, meets too. But recently, Club America changed its meeting days to every Monday. 

Each member introduced themselves and the reasons why they joined Club America. Two students both echoed the sentiment that the club sounded like a lot of fun, and that there were not a lot of conservative clubs. Another member talked about how Club America was created for young men to find political parties and their faith, two things he really cared about, and was the reason he joined. 

That lasted for about 10 minutes before Alice talked about how she hoped each member would research a core TPUSA value and share it with the club in the next meeting. After that, the meeting turned into a hangout time, where students mostly talked with each other and played hangman on the whiteboard. 

And, this was my biggest takeaway from attending the club meeting. To me, right now, the club felt like a hangout club for people who share conservative values. A place where they can find friends and other like-minded students in a school, city, and state known to be extremely left-leaning. It isn’t a perfectly organized chapter at the moment; it seemed students were there just to have fun and create a place where they could share their conservative values. Maybe in the future, the club may host debates or guest speakers, or other events that promote conservative values. But right now, it was extremely laid back, chill, with good vibes all around.

I then talked with one of the students about his core beliefs. I asked him what his 3 biggest issues were. He said Immigration, Abortion, and Church and State. He believed in increasing citizenship pathways, but had a strict stance on illegal immigration. He believed abortion was murder and also believed in less separation between church and state. He gave the example of allowing religious study classes in public schools. He said that he was well-versed in many of the core issues and is glad to find a club to share his conservative values. 

Crescent Valley’s Turning Point USA Club shows the broad diversity of the different beliefs of our student body. While the national image of TPUSA is extremely polarizing, at the high school level, many political clubs like this serve as a place to find belonging and community rather than outright proactive activism. I believe that having a club that shares conservative values reflects the importance of having an open dialogue regarding different political viewpoints. Especially here in Corvallis, Oregon, we can sometimes mainly be exposed to left-leaning ideas and rarely hear the other side. We should not fear those with different beliefs, but learn to embrace them as part of what makes us human. We have to remember that in America, almost half of our country voted for the republican candidate. We can’t just dismiss half of America’s beliefs as invalid just because we disagree. As the Junior Editor of Crescent Crier, who is committed to maintaining a free market of ideas and opinions, I hope to see Club America become the vehicle for more respectful debates and the exchange of differing ideas and opinions at Crescent Valley.