College Republicans in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones

The USC College Republicans are at it again, bringing a politically controversial speaker to campus on Wednesday while maintaining that other student organizations should stay away from politics. A mere eight days after the club shared a Daily Trojan letter to the editor with the comment “student dollars should never be spent on partisan politics,” the club is hosting Milo Yiannopoulos, noting in their description of the event that the speaker has been called a “rising star of the Right.” This club has some gall to give overtly political speakers a platform at USC while admonishing student groups for being even tangentially involved in politics.

In the letter to the Daily Trojan, author Giuseppe Robalino seems to argue that the Women’s Student Assembly is engaging in “divisive politics” by establishing relations with a California union that has encouraged lawmakers to support legislation that helps workers. Because the WSA gets funding from USC, Robalino says they are unethically dragging USC students into politics, even though no WSA funds ever went to the union in question. USC College Republicans applauded the author and the letter.

On the same page, the club  also encourages students to attend the upcoming talk with the political commentator Yiannopolous. The idea that student groups should not be political while encouraging students to see a political speaker hosted by a political student group is incongruous.

This is not the first time USC College Republicans has been caught speaking one way but acting another. Last spring, USC hosted civil rights activist Angela Davis for a talk on race and inclusivity.

As columnist Nathaniel Haas pointed out in the Daily Trojan at the time, the College Republicans posted on its Facebook page that Davis “has no place on our campus and should have never been invited to speak” and “shame on the groups responsible for bringing murderer communist Angela Davis to USC tonight.” Haas noted, “The College Republicans hosted Ann Coulter on campus two years ago, a speaker whose bigotry toward race, the Muslim religion and sexual orientation is well known. Viewed in the most positive light, their statements about Davis are blatantly hypocritical.” Just like this past spring, the College Republicans cannot resist telling others how to conduct their programming while ignoring its own advice.

Whatever an individual might believe about Coulter, Davis or Yiannopolous, the three can only appear on campus to speak to students because students, student groups and the University support the events. Student tuition dollars pay for the infrastructure that gives speakers lecture halls, podiums and microphones, as well as sometimes paying speakers’ appearance fees. Student groups find speakers who will educate their members and members of the Trojan Family and invite the speakers to campus. The University lends its name and credibility to the events and coordinates these efforts with administrators to oversee the process. In getting speakers to come to campus, all members of the Trojan Family play a role.

The College Republicans is being intellectually dishonest; it is applying a strict standard to other groups without applying the same scrutiny to themselves. The club should either believe that student groups should stay out of politics and cancel tonight’s event, or should accept that student groups can and should interact with all sorts of speakers. If the club cannot accept that other opinions exist on campus, it should disband in its current form and dissociate the club from USC entirely.

USC College Republicans can only exist with University and student support. USC allows the club to exist, allows the club to use the name “University of Southern California,” gives the club meeting space in University buildings, invites the club to participate at involvement fairs on Trousdale Parkway and helps bring speakers to campus.

Whatever USC College Republicans may say in the future about the ways in which it pays speaking fees — as it did this spring, when discussing Coulter’s appearance — it could not bring speakers like Coulter or Yiannopoulos to campus without USC’s support, which is paid for by tuition dollars. Certainly, the club could disband and reform as the “Los Angeles Republicans Who Are Also College Students Club,” but then they would not have the institutional support necessary to bring big-name speakers to their events. Because it exists as part of USC, it needs to recognize and accept the value that the University provides to all students who want to hear speakers on campus.

It would be tragic if USC began restricting speakers based on their political views. For the good of all Trojans, the USC College Republicans should reconsider their position on student political activism.