This article is featured in the 2025 Homecoming Special Issue.
This fall, three Dartmouth students established a Dartmouth chapter of Turning Point USA — a conservative youth organization founded in 2012 by late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The chapter now has 15 members with plans to host speakers and organize “community-building” events.
The chain of 3,500 college and high school clubs espouses “fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government,” according to its website.
Dartmouth TPUSA president Vito Bloyer ’28 said he founded the chapter to highlight an “underrepresented perspective on campus.”
“We’re a very liberal school,” Bloyer said. “Promoting the conservative mission begins with allowing people to feel like their voices can be heard and giving them the courage to speak up in the form of activism.”
Chapter vice president Isaiah Harrison ’28 said that ever since Bloyer first approached him with the idea for the chapter, he was “all in.” He added that the Dartmouth TPUSA serves as a space where conservative students can feel “comfortable.”
“At least for a long period of time, conservative — and especially Christian conservative voices — haven’t had a large place on campus,” Harrison said. “I feel like the first thing we have to offer is a space for those people.”
Dartmouth Political Union president Malcolm Mahoney ’26 agreed that the new TPUSA chapter will help the College platform “a wide range of ideas.”
“I think ultimately [TPUSA is] just another opportunity for more speakers to be on campus and to give the student body more opportunities to actually engage with ideas that they don’t encounter all the time,” Mahoney said.
National TPUSA representatives contacted Bloyer in the spring to encourage him to found a TPUSA chapter at Dartmouth, Bloyer said. According to Bloyer, Kirk had expressed interest in the founding of a Turning Point chapter at Dartmouth before his debate with Hasan Piker.
“I was like, ‘Oh, wow,’” Bloyer said. “That’s how this all happened, and that’s why we’re here right now for this term.”
On Sept. 10, two weeks before his scheduled visit to campus, Kirk was shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University. On Sept. 25 — the date of the scheduled debate with Piker — the Dartmouth TPUSA chapter held a vigil for Kirk.
Bloyer said it was “shocking” that the club’s first campus event was a vigil, but noted that “45-50 people showed up in pouring rain” to attend the event.
“People showed up … from all across the aisle as well, to show their support against political violence and to reflect on the life of Charlie Kirk,” Bloyer said.
Bloyer said the TPUSA chapter has a “conservative mission statement,” which he said was different from existing political clubs on campus, such as the nonpartisan DPU. Bloyer said the DPU “does a great job” of organizing neutral events, but added that in contrast, the TPUSA chapter is “an ideologically-driven organization.”
Bloyer said the chapter will “come out with more stuff” later in the term, including educational sessions, a “gun safety day,” and a “shooting range day.” Among the events this fall, Bloyer said that TikTok personality and cultural commentator Will Witt will visit campus to speak about a “free-speech related” topic.
“The point of bringing these speakers is obviously to provide … a place for the conservative mission to be directly funneled towards an audience that can either reject the premises of the arguments or accept them,” Bloyer said.
