Cardinal News asked two reporters to give our readers the view from Blacksburg as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA event came to Virginia Tech. It turned out to be a study in contrasts.
INSIDE
Over 3,000 guests filled Burruss Hall on Virginia Tech’s campus for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA tour, featuring Gov. Glenn Youngkin and conservative journalist Megyn Kelly.
The organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, had planned to visit Virginia Tech on Wednesday amid his American Comeback Tour, debating college students on controversial topics. However, following his shooting death on Sept. 10, the campus was left shocked.
“It was unbelievable,” Virginia Tech student Brandon Rogers said while waiting in line. “The amount of hate in this country and the fact people are celebrating it is crazy to me. It doesn’t matter what side you are politically, he’s a father with two kids.”
Attendees waited at Virginia Tech’s Burruss Hall, where crowds lined the sidewalks with MAGA hats, American flags, and the College Republican Club handing out slices of Avellino’s pizza. Turning Point USA members in white shirts checked tickets and ushered people into the auditorium.
“I’m very excited,” Jack Medler, chairman of the College Republicans Club at Virginia Tech, said as the line began moving. “It’s fun and it’s incredible to see this many people here.”
Parallel to those waiting at Burruss Hall, a group of protesters gathered as they chanted, “No fascism, no Trump.”
“I was distraught to hear that Turning Point USA and Glenn Younkin were coming to our campus especially with the policies that have been put in place,” said Meghan McHenry, a member of the Young Democratic Socialists at Virginia Tech.
Inside Burruss Hall, guests across Virginia and other states were seated at max capacity. The room echoed conversation and energy while music played in surround sound. After a standing ovation, Youngkin spoke first.
“Tonight is a moment for us to come together,” Youngkin said. “I look out at this room and I see thousands of lights, I see thousands of futures. Each one of you is the next Charlie Kirk. You are the light.”
Youngkin invited the audience to pray in unison. The rows of the auditorium became one as strangers turned to one another, reached across the aisles and held hands.
“There is a revival spreading across this great nation that is spreading out while it points up to who’s in charge,” Youngkin said. “Examine it. Engage and endure. That’s what tonight is all about.”
Concluding his speech, Youngkin announced a $100,000 donation to support Turning Point chapters across the country. Remarks were made from Virginia Tech’s Turning Point chapter president, Elliot Mel, thanking law enforcement, then inviting Kelly to the stage.
“Charlie was looking forward to this,” Kelly said. “He wanted to be here with you, and Erika [Kirk] wanted me to tell you that she is so proud of you for showing up and that she’s got your back.”
Kelly made remarks to the primarily conservative audience, encouraging them to be “loud and proud,” as they fight for what they believe in.
“I think we all came here for the same reason,” Kelly said. “To send a message that we will not be silenced.”
With energy abuzz, Kelly opened a microphone for questions from the audience. Many questions related to political ideologies in school, cancel culture, and the president’s ongoing term. The panel concluded by 9 p.m. as students left with Charlie Kirk posters as memorabilia.
—Kyle Reeder
OUTSIDE
It was lap swim as normal at Virginia Tech’s McComas Recreation Center Pool on Wednesday at noon, five hours before doors opened for the Turning Point USA American Comeback Tour event. The recreation center and pool would be closed if there were a home football game scheduled for the evening. Traffic around campus would be gridlocked; public parking would be limited and come with a $30 price tag; and on-campus classes after 3:15 pm might have been canceled, as they were for a Thursday evening football game last fall.
Turning Point USA’s event wasn’t having that kind of impact on a campus the size of a small city in Blacksburg.
At 1:45 p.m., across campus from the pool, streams of students crisscrossed the Drillfield like normal. Under the overcast and humid afternoon, a half-hearted drizzle loitered. Students in short shorts with long sweatshirts or jeans and T-shirts walked in pairs or alone.
‘We want everyone to feel comfortable and safe’
Four undergraduate students in Barbie pink T-shirts surrounded a table on the sidewalk near Eggleston Hall. Eggleston Hall is separated from the Drillfield by only a narrow one-way road. The students were working for Vote for Equality, an independent political action committee, and hand out Skittles, sour gummies, pink buttons and pamphlets. Criminology and psychology major Anna Leon said that they’re trying to mobilize students to vote in small elections by letting them know “who’s on the ballot and what they stand for.”
They would have been present regardless of the Turning Point USA event. However, they set up their table near the dorm instead on the Drillfield and said they planned to stop working at 4 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. because “We want everyone to feel comfortable and safe. We don’t want to create anything that could put anyone at risk or not have to get caught up in the crowd,” Leon said.
One of the students, psychology and human development major Sarah Aten, had tickets to the Turning Point USA event but was considering attending the protests. Leon was on the fence about attending the protests, but her Vote for Equality co-worker Natalie Brooks, an engineering major, said that she was definitely attending the protest. The fourth student, psychology major Ishita Ponnada, had a class at 5:30 p.m. None of the four women’s professors had canceled classes for the Turning Point USA event, they said.
Getting in line
At 2 p.m., across the Drillfield from the Vote for Equality table, three police cars were parked in front of Burruss Hall. Two inconspicuous vertical signs — one that read “General Admission Line Starts Here” and another with “Student Line Starts Here” — were propped on the stairs in front of Burruss Hall. A handful of people sat on the stairs beneath each sign. It was quiet except for the barking of a German shepherd. Two police officers each had a German shepherd. One dog playfully pulled his leash trying to hop through leaves. The other squatted in a different pile of leaves. The officer did not try to pick up the mess.
At 4:28 p.m., only 30 minutes before the doors were scheduled to open, half of the parking spaces in the Duck Pond lot adjacent to the Drillfield were open. There were no signs for the Turning Point event, no directions for parking, no arrows toward Burruss Hall, no portable toilets, no extra red, white, and blue. The only road that was closed to cars was the section of Drillfield Drive in front of Burruss Hall. The whirr and creak of a skateboard expertly smoothly steered by a young man with dreadlocks was louder than the people in the general admissions line.
Making the trip
Stephen Davis, who has 340,000 followers on Instagram, made sure to get his bicep and tricep workout in at in the hotel gym before coming to campus. Davis, in a red tank top, black sunglasses, and bright smile, had traveled to Blacksburg from his home in Arizona to “be able to support my fellow patriots and the message that Charlie was all about.” He posed for pictures with people in line.
People in both the general admissions and student lines stepped aside to let people cross through the lines to classroom buildings and the Drillfield. Neither the people in the lines nor the people walking through the lines seemed fazed. A young woman in a Virginia Tech soccer T-shirt drove her scooter up the closed road.
Doors, which were supposed to open at 5, were still closed about half an hour later. The one road closed was the one right in front of Burruss.
Deklan Schnupe, a freshman physics major, arrived at Burruss after calculus. He didn’t learn about the event until he was on the way to class. “After class, I was, like, let’s go check it out. So grabbed an acai bowl and came over.” Schnupe, who said he felt “pretty safe,” tossed his empty acai bowl in a trashcan and said, “I think it’s good to have the students out and have them express their views on something like this. It looks like a good event.” He didn’t plan to join the student line but said he might check back later this evening. “Just overall, I’d say what I stand by is that violence is never the answer.”
Several pairs of young adults sat on Hokie Stone near the April 16 Memorial directly in front of Burruss Hall. Each of the pairs — a total of eight people — declined to be interviewed. One person muttered and shook her head, “You never know, future employers.” Another nodded her head but said, “um, no, I don’t want to say anything.” People continued walking unperturbed across the Drillfield. Of the more than 31,000 undergraduate Virginia Tech students, very few were involved in the event — either in line, watching the line, or protesting the line.
‘It’s not chaos’
About 5:40 p.m., the one small cluster of protesters that had formed beneath three small maroon and orange canopies began chanting. The chants included “Hey hey, ho ho, trans hate has got to go,” “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA” and “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”
They walked closer to the Turning Point line, but remained on the Drillfield — across the road from the student line. At one point, the student line chanted “Charlie Charlie Charlie” for about ten seconds. But students in the line watched — and held up their phones to film — the protesters without interacting with or responding to them.
A student in the part of line closest to the protesters, who asked to be identified only by his major — engineering — said he felt “pretty safe” and was “happy about how calm everyone is and how it’s not chaos.” He didn’t want his name shared because he doesn’t “want somebody to be turned off from me. I’m not really affiliated with a political party, but maybe they would disagree with this event, and I’d rather see how I am in personal interaction — see how I love and care about people and leave the politics out of it.” He smiled and wished the Cardinal reporter a blessed day. The line moved forward slowly, without intensity.
The line moves in, the campus moves on
“Tickets and ID’s. Tickets and ID’s out, please,” a woman in a black shirt printed with FREEDOM in white letters repeated to students climbing the short flight of stairs in front of the STUDENT LINE STARTS HERE sign.
A student in a maroon tank top, blue jeans and chunky brass jewelry forgot her ID. “What should I do?” The woman in black told her to pull up her student account on her phone as proof of her identification when she reached the check-in point. A minute later, the woman in black told a male student with a buzz hair cut that he couldn’t take his backpack into the event. He dropped the backpack in a bush on the other side of the stairs and continued on his way.
On the far side of the Drillfield from Burruss, a group of students played flag football. The chants of the protesters were faint; what they were chanting was indecipherable.
The lines for the event were also faint; from that vantage point, Burruss looked completely normal. Owen Ballino, a computer engineering major, was practicing flag football with Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service fraternity. He said they came to the Drillfield for an impromptu practice and, despite the Turning Point event, it “honestly, felt the same. It’s been pretty indifferent. Everyone over there is free to do however they’re feeling. It’s peaceful. They’re saying what they want to say — this is what we want to say. We want to say that we want to play football a little bit because we’ve been sitting in chairs all day.” One of the frat members — a cheerful student who said they’d had a ton of fun but didn’t want to give his name — helped Ballino pull off his cleats. They bumped fists, grabbed their backpacks, and split up heading different directions on campus.
The student line finished filing up the stairs through the tall, opaque doors of Burruss. The general admissions line inched forward. There were just as many heads topped with Virginia Tech ballcaps as there were heads with red hats printed with MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN or FREEDOM or other text promoted by the Turning Point movement.
A police officer with a German shepherd crossed the street. The protester group never expanded beyond the small pocket on one side of the Drillfield. Only one person — the leader of the protesters — had a megaphone. All afternoon and evening, people came in and out of the doors of Pamplin Hall, the business school building next door to Burruss. The same three police cars that had been parked outside of Burruss at 2 p.m. were there at 6:30 p.m. The lead-up to the event seemed soft — a movement with very little movement. Campus traffic, classes and workouts moved right by.
—Abby Steketee