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It has been only six weeks since conservative icon Charlie Kirk was horrifically assassinated by a radicalized trans activist in Orem, Utah. In the wake of Kirk’s death, the academic left made their hatred for Kirk well known. Even now, weeks after his passing, some of these depraved radical lunatics just can’t seem to help themselves when confronted with the genuine patriotism and faith that Kirk inspired among students.
At Illinois State University, Derek Lopez, a 27-year-old graduate student who also worked as a teaching assistant at the university, was arrested after he deliberately assaulted a TP USA table on campus and tore down the organization’s posters.
The conservative student group was tabling on campus to promote an event with comedian Alex Stein.
Video footage of the incident shows Lopez, who wears a plaid shirt and has his hair in a ‘man bun,’ speaking with the students manning the table. Following this apparently civil conversation, Lopez states, “Well, you know, Jesus did it, so you know I gotta do it, right?” He then twice grabs the table with the intent to demolish TP USA’s careful display, turning it on its side and sending buttons and informational materials flying to the ground.
“Thanks guys, have a great day,” he adds sarcastically as he makes his exit, stopping only to rip a TP USA poster from a nearby bulletin board.
Video of the assault quickly went viral, leading to Lopez’s identification. An Instragram account traced to the TA also advocates violence, with one post asserting, “I stand with punching ICE in the face.”
Once identified, criminal charges for disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property soon followed. Illinois State, while refusing to comment on any specifics, has confirmed that Lopez is no longer employed by the university.
Illinois State University Police report that he has also been accused of accosting a second student table hosted by another campus group.
“We just want to have our table and talk to people,” said one of the TPUSA students, commenting on the incident. “Nobody deserves to be treated like that.”
Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice even commented on the incident, posting on X, “This is outrageous anti-speech conduct by a state employee. What’s up, @IllinoisStateU ?!”
The Illinois State TP USA students were not alone in being targeted for their conservative activism honoring Charlie Kirk. At Oklahoma State University, student Joshua Wilson was threatened by an administrator because he gave a speech honoring Charlie Kirk to the Student Government Association just hours after the conservative activist’s death.
Wilson is a junior who serves as both chair of OSU’s Student Government Association and as vice-chair of the campus College Republicans chapter. He also worked with TP USA when the organization brought Kirk to OSU for a campus visit last April.
On September 10th, as news of Kirk’s horrific assassination spread, Wilson addressed the student government. “In his brief remarks, he encouraged students to carry on Kirk’s message of free speech and condemned political violence,” Fox News Digital describes. “He also wore a Turning Point USA hat that Kirk had given him during an April visit to campus. The hat displayed the number ‘47,’ referencing President Trump.”
“He lived with the hope that debate could spark conversation in a country that, for too many years, had lost that ability,” Wilson’s speech stated of Kirk. “May we carry forward his legacy by refusing to shy away from difficult conversations, by standing firm in our convictions, and by remembering that true progress begins with dialogue.”
The speech was received with appreciation and applause by Wilson’s peers in student government. But one week later, Wilson was summoned to a meeting with OSU’s Coordinator for Student Government Programs, Melisa Echols.
Echols claimed that Wilson’s TP USA hat violated the student government’s prohibition on partisanship and said that other students might be “triggered” by it.
“As a person who doesn’t look like you and has not had the same lived experience as you, I have family who don’t look like you who are triggered — and I will be very candid with you — who are triggered by those hats and by that side,” Echols told Wilson.
“I would challenge you to ask others who don’t look like you” and “have open conversations with anyone that has a different lived experience and see what, if anything, that might do for someone else, aside from someone who is politically aligned the same as you,” Echols added, seemingly implying that Wilson’s racial background determined his political views.
“Ask yourself: Have you had those levels of discourse with people that don’t look like you, have not had the same lived experiences as you?” Echols continued. “And what does—or did, and even do—wearing something like that or even saying something like that, how did that impact them?”
In response, Wilson reminded Echols that he is a member of the Cherokee nation and regularly speaks with individuals from other racial backgrounds and political persuasions. “I don’t like to pull that card,” Wilson explained later. “But if you’re going to pull that card on me, I might as well.”
Despite the condescending tone from an overbearing administrator, Wilson stood his ground. “Any student in general should have the liberty and not show any fear of expressing their thoughts and ideas. And that’s what I wholeheartedly believe as the president of the debate club and as an individual is that idea and conversation is what built this country, and it’s what should maintain it. And that’s what the hat was there for,” he told the professor. Wilson also argued that given the context of Charlie Kirk’s death just hours earlier, wearing the hat was not a partisan symbol and did not cause harm to others on campus.
This defense made Echols angry and defensive. “‘But’ cannot be the end of every statement. That’s not a learned lesson,” Echols told Wilson. “It cannot just be, ‘yes, but’ – cannot be every response that you give me. Otherwise, this year is going to be difficult for you.”
“I viewed it as a veiled threat,” Wilson said of these comments. “She went from being very kind at the beginning of the meeting to very short and angry toward the end. So I knew nothing good was going to come of that ending statement.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which sent a letter to OSU on Wilson’s behalf, agreed with this assessment. “The power differential between university administrators and students is significant,” FIRE stated in the letter to OSU President Jim Hess. “When an administrator with disciplinary authority demands a meeting with a student representative about his or her protected speech, the student is likely to infer an implicit threat of discipline…Such a demand strongly suggests that a student’s actions were problematic, and they may accordingly self-censor.”
The OSU administration has since confirmed that all students have the right to freedom of speech on campus, with the Vice President of Student Affairs noting that “All staff charged with supporting student groups have received direct clarification about our policies and our unwavering commitment to free speech and our expectation that every student can fully express themselves.”
Echols has unsurprisingly been harassing conservative students for years.
“Melisa Echols regularly demonstrated that conservative ideology was not welcome in the SGA at Oklahoma State,” former student Ashley Peterson told the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. “I regularly felt criticized and sidelined because of my conservative views, even during my time as the student body president.”
As for Derek Lopez, the recently-fired TA from Illinois State University, it is hard to imagine such a volatile individual, who gleefully destroyed a TP USA table and posted memes advocating “punching ICE in the face,” would exercise impartiality or restraint when grading papers or moderating classroom discussions.
The incidents at both OSU and Illinois State University reveal the remarkable double standard that still exists surrounding conservative speech and activism on campus—the very double standard that Charlie Kirk sought to expose. The far left has become far too comfortable in their total control of our educational institutions and far too zealous in suppressing all dissent. Now, faced with finally losing their monopoly on power, they are unable to restrain themselves. They resort to violence and threats because they cannot win the war of words or ideas. Charlie Kirk’s tragic passing has emboldened a new generation of students who will continue to challenge them.
