By: Andy Byars, Turning Point USA at ISU President  
On Tuesday, August 29th, I led Turning Point USA at Illinois State University’s first chapter meeting for the semester. We recapped our successes from the 2016-2017 school year with new members, and set goals for our chapter for the coming 2017-2018 school year. Afterwards, we took to our school’s quad and chalked and hung up posters with slogans such as “Big Government Sucks”, “Free Markets Free People”, and “Capitalism Cures Poverty”. It was a fun activity for our club, and we were proud of the work we had done. The next morning, we soon found that our posters and chalk had been vandalized with things like “Nazi” and “Racist”, completely inaccurate words to describe Turning Point USA and our ideas. However, accuracy is not important to leftists, as they intend to use these tactics to shut conservative ideas up across our country. Our constitutional right to free speech and having a healthy political discourse are essential elements to our country’s democracy, and must be defended, especially on college campuses where exposure to conservative ideas is minimal.