A chapter of Turning Point USA has opened at Creek. Sponsored by Spanish teacher Susan Mosby, the club’s aims are to promote dialogue and the discussion of freedom.  

Founded in 2012 by Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA seeks to “build the most organized, active, and powerful conservative grassroots activist network on high school and college campuses across the country,” according to their website. 

Turning Point USA, often abbreviated as TPUSA, is a youth organization dedicated to the restoration of values such as patriotism, fiscal responsibility, and respect for life and family. 

Creek’s new chapter looks to provide a welcoming and tolerant space to students with more conservative views.

As of now, Creek’s chapter of TPUSA meets every other Monday and has a dedicated leadership team. Sophomore chapter president Emerson Greenland is a firm believer in the need to create dialogue across the political aisle. 

“Right now we are trying to collaborate with other clubs who have opposing beliefs from us, so we can be able to find a common ground and talk about various issues,” Greenland said. 

Mosby is eager to start a dialogue with other clubs who represent societal topics. 

“We’ll learn about the issues, we’ll be able to use facts to talk about the issues and we can have a real debate, a real conversation,” Mosby said. “It won’t just be one-sided.”

In addition to being a safe space for politically conservative students, Creek’s chapter of TPUSA looks to be a collaborative and socially strengthening institution.

“We want to foster more tolerance from both sides,” sophomore chapter vice president Ben Ruehmann said. “Our goal is to create a new environment where people can speak their minds without insults from people on either side. In a place with a lot of division, you don’t feel right speaking your mind.”

Both Greenland and TPUSA place an emphasis on the need to have free and open dialogue.

“When people stop talking bad things happen,” Greenland said.

Though the chapter is new to Creek, they already have goals set for what, specifically, they want to achieve. Among them is to construct a rebuttal for the USJ’s opinion article on the Pledge of Allegiance, published in their December issue. “We want to try to get our article out there, we want to talk about our side of the story and our side of the debate,” Greenland said.

An anonymous senior joined TPUSA because they want to understand the different beliefs within the more conservative areas of Creek. “Even though we may have similar ideologies, we all have slightly different beliefs within those ideologies,” they said. 

Due to the nature of this club being a chapter of a larger organization, work had to be done at both the Creek level and the TPUSA organization, which made the act of establishing the club more complicated. But overall, the effort was successful. “We, in the leadership team, are all thankful that we didn’t receive much pushback,” Greenland said.

Predominantly, TPUSA at Creek seeks to foster community with politically conservative students and to build a bond between them in an atmosphere that they view is unwelcoming to and unwilling to hear their beliefs.

“We need to have a voice that is big and creates change,” Greenland said. “It’s not acceptable anywhere for somebody’s beliefs to be suppressed and hidden compared to someone else’s.”