The Turning Point USA chapter at a small Colorado college has seen its membership stay flat because students are afraid to join, and the school says it hasn't received a single harassment report all year.
Rachel Cook, president of the TPUSA chapter at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, told Fox News Digital that conservative students on campus face social ostracism severe enough to keep them from signing up. The chapter exists. It holds events. But it isn't growing.
David Peters, a retired Chevron executive and former chair of the La Plata County Republican Party, confirmed the stagnation. He said the problem is straightforward: students don't want the target on their backs.
"Their membership has been essentially flat. The issue is that a lot of students are reluctant to join the chapter for fear of retaliation."
That fear didn't come from nowhere. Cook described a campus climate where conservative views draw open hostility rather than debate.
"Being a conservative on campus or even having conservative-leaning beliefs is not a popular idea here. We have seen a lot of disrespect and not a lot of people who are open to having civil discussion and discourse."
Cook's account goes beyond cold shoulders and dirty looks. She told Fox News Digital that a chapter officer was spat on while running an information table, a standard recruitment activity for any student organization. She also described harassment directed at pro-life advocates who partner with the chapter.
"We work a lot with pro-life community members who come to campus and do their advocacy whenever we're not able to stand with them. Even in these past couple of weeks, people have come up to them, ripped their signs and attempted to hit them. A lot of people choose not to press charges."
That last detail matters. If victims don't file formal complaints, the incidents vanish from the official record, which is exactly what Fort Lewis College's response suggests has happened.
A college spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the school "takes the safety of our students and visitors seriously" and "continues to respond to all reports of safety concerns on campus." But the spokesperson also said the college had received no reports of harassment involving TPUSA chapter members this academic year.
No reports filed. No reports received. Case closed, as far as the administration is concerned. The gap between Cook's firsthand descriptions and the college's clean ledger raises an obvious question: is the system working, or are students simply not using it because they don't trust it to help?
The chapter's rocky start set the tone. A then-senior named Jonah Flynn initially pushed to establish a TPUSA presence at Fort Lewis College. The student government, the Associated Students of Fort Lewis College, rejected his proposal. Only three people publicly supported it, according to a local report cited in the Fox News article.
Flynn also drew criticism for proposing a watchlist of Fort Lewis College professors that would mirror a national TPUSA project. Critics objected both to the watchlist idea and to TPUSA's broader political positions.
The student government eventually reversed itself and approved the chapter in an emergency session. That meeting drew roughly 70 attendees, a large crowd for a student government proceeding at a small college. A campus police report noted that verbal confrontations spilled out of the meeting room and into the building lobby after the approval vote.
The hostility that greeted the chapter's founding has never fully faded. Cook, who took over leadership from Flynn, has tried to steer the group toward policy discussions rather than provocations. She described plans for the current semester that include a Second Amendment event, a group shooting outing, and other initiatives still in development.
The chapter recently held a vigil for TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University. Cook called the memorial "beautiful." The Kirk family has since filed legal action against the university, alleging preventable security failures.
Kirk's death reshaped TPUSA's national trajectory. The organization reported receiving more than 120,000 inquiries from students across the country who wanted to start their own chapters in the aftermath. That surge of interest suggests conservative students aren't apathetic, they're energized. The question is whether campuses will let them organize without paying a social price.
At Fort Lewis College, the price appears steep enough to freeze growth in place. Cook's chapter can table, plan events, and hold vigils. What it cannot seem to do is convince new members that joining won't cost them friendships, classroom standing, or worse.
The pattern isn't unique to Durango. Kirk's legacy has become a flashpoint on campuses nationwide. A left-wing student group organized a protest of a Kirk memorial at the very campus where he was killed, a move that drew sharp criticism from conservatives who saw it as a deliberate provocation at a site of tragedy.
Even memorials to Kirk have drawn hostility. Vandals defaced a Kirk memorial statue at TPUSA's national headquarters with red paint, crossing out the word "Jesus" in what amounted to a targeted act of political vandalism.
The college's insistence that no harassment reports have been filed this academic year deserves scrutiny. Cook described an officer being spat on. She described pro-life advocates being physically confronted and having their signs destroyed. She said victims "choose not to press charges."
If those accounts are accurate, the absence of formal reports doesn't mean the absence of incidents. It means students and community members have decided, for whatever reason, that the system won't protect them. A reporting mechanism is only as useful as the trust people place in it.
Fort Lewis College said it has "a system in place for students to report negative experiences." That's a process answer to a culture problem. When a chapter officer gets spat on and nobody files a report, the system isn't working. It's just sitting there.
Cook, for her part, isn't giving up. She framed the chapter's mission in practical terms, not ideological ones.
"Our vision for this year is to really talk about policy coming up in Colorado that affects us as a community here."
The wrongful death claim filed by the Kirk family against Utah Valley University has added urgency to questions about how institutions handle threats to conservative figures and organizations on campus. Whether those questions reach Fort Lewis College's administration in any meaningful way remains to be seen.
A campus that prides itself on openness ought to be able to handle a student club with fifteen members and a table. If it can't, the problem isn't the club.
