College student Tanner Buchanan told Breitbart News that his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) student group at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was denied approval to be an officially recognized student group on campus over concerns that had come from “anonymous sources.” Buchanan spoke to SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow in a Wednesday interview for the show’s weekly TPUSA campus report.
Buchanan, who is the TPUSA chapter president at Coe College, said that the school’s student senate — which holds much power with little oversight from the college — denied the conservative group from receiving official campus recognition.
The student added that in denying TPUSA, the student government had also cited a list of concerns about the conservative student group, which they had received from “anonymous sources.”
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The reasons for the group’s denial appeared vague and mundane, such as setting up a Facebook page for the TPUSA student group before it the chapter became official, and a so-called “lack of oversight by the national organization,” among other alleged reasons.
“Are you seeing this level of ‘by the book’ enforcement of some of these rules to people of different political worldview?” asked Marlow.
“No,” answered Buchanan. “When I first started this, the first professor I talked to to be an adviser, he just warned me that they tried to start [a conservative club] about four years ago, and it ended really bad. So he didn’t recommend it.”
The student added that he nonetheless insisted on getting TPUSA started on campus, adding that Coe College has a Democrat student group.
“So there’s no reason why can’t have a conservative club on campus,” said Buchanan.
“What’s funny is when they mentioned [the] reasons to us, they didn’t give us a chance to explain before they went into voting,” added Buchanan of the student senate’s process in denying a TPUSA group.
Marlow mentioned that it seems as though the school is trying to prevent the conservative group from being able to operate on campus.
“There are hurdles that are in place,” said Marlow. “You just want to get some conservative ideas into the bloodstream at your campus, and they’re making it almost impossible — if not impossible — to do this.”
“It just seems like they’re trying to exhaust you with process so that you don’t end up ever doing any events or getting any information out there,” he added.
Buchanan went on to mention that one of his conservative friends — who is also in student government at the school — told him that the student senate members “already had it in their minds that they weren’t going to let [TPUSA] through” for approval.
According to Buchanan, the student senate had a long, closed-door discussion, before they eventually voted to deny the TPUSA club.
The student added that his friend in student government had mentioned that the private meeting was essentially used in order to “think of reasons that they could deny [TPUSA] and make it seem legit.”
“That was probably the most upsetting part,” said Buchanan. “It took them two hours to think of things to deny us just because they didn’t like us.”
“The school is making it difficult for sure, but it also doesn’t help that I’m being told that I can’t have this organization on campus by a bunch of people who, the leaders of their Party can’t even count simple numbers,” the student added, referring to the recent Iowa Caucus disaster.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.