Membership in the Turning Point USA chapter at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, has remained flat for roughly 10 months, with chapter leaders and a local supporter citing what they describe as lingering fears of retaliation among students, Fox News Digital reported.
“It’s definitely been flat, I would say,” Rachel Cook, vice president of the campus chapter, told Fox News Digital.
Ms. Cook’s remarks come about 10 months after the student government’s decision to recognize the chapter set off severe turmoil on campus, including a Nov. 7 altercation in which a student struck Mr. Peters’ phone and hand with an empty Taco Bell cup outside the student senate chambers, according to a campus police report. The report identified the student as Megan Elizabeth Hope Mollett, who was detained and later released with a warning after David Peters, 66, declined to press criminal charges.
Mr. Peters, a former chair of the La Plata County Republican Party and a retired Chevron executive, said the fallout has discouraged some students from joining.
“There have been some members who have received anonymous death threats,” Mr. Peters told Fox News Digital — a claim that has not been independently verified.
Ms. Cook similarly said chapter officers have faced harassment, though that account likewise rests on her own description to Fox News Digital rather than independent confirmation.
The tension traces to a chaotic Nov. 7 meeting of the Associated Students of Fort Lewis College, which reversed an earlier rejection and voted to approve the chapter during an emergency session after then-senior Jonah Flynn pushed to establish a campus presence. Roughly 70 people attended, and a confrontation broke out in the lobby afterward. During that same protest, David Kozak, a retired Fort Lewis anthropology professor emeritus, was recorded shouting at TPUSA supporters.
“Go on, fascists … C’mon, Nazis!” Mr. Kozak said, according to video obtained by Fox News Digital.
The dispute at the small liberal-arts college unfolded amid a nationwide surge of interest in TPUSA campus chapters following the assassination of TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last September. Inquiries from students seeking to start new chapters climbed in the weeks that followed, and the organization said the total topped 120,000 after Kirk’s memorial service later that month. The Fort Lewis dispute also unfolds against a broader national backdrop of political violence and threats aimed at conservative figures and organizations, including a separate case in which a Texas man was charged with threatening to bomb a Turning Point USA event and kill CEO Erika Kirk.
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