Turning Point USA visits Pitt-Greenburg campus

Before the start of the spring semester, members of the right-wing organization Turning Point USA made an unauthorized visit to campus to promote their operation to Pitt-Greensburg’s students and faculty.

They were asked to leave the campus and complied. That same day, a note was slipped under the door of Associate Professor of political science, Dr. Paul Adams’s office. Dr. Adams says that the note seemed to be suggesting that he was involved in some kind of indoctrination of a left-wing bias towards students. 

“I think we’re in an atmosphere in which people are easily indoctrinated into thinking that’s what goes on here,” Dr. Adams says. 

Across the country, there has been an uptick in attacks in the name of politics, both physical and cyber. Adams says this type of “low-level intimidation” is becoming normalized on college campuses nationwide.

“Do I think about my personal security more frequently now than maybe I used to?” Adams asks. “I think I do.”

Pitt-Greensburg students express a similar wariness. 

Cody Richmond, a freshman communication major, says he was shocked to learn about Turning Point USA’s visit to campus and the possible connection to the note that was slipped under Dr. Adams’s door.

“It shouldn’t be a crime to learn about something,” Richmond says. “I think Turning Point doing that shows how they don’t care at all about freedom of speech. They just want everyone to align with their harmful, conservative right-wing views.”

A culture of being inundated with extremist rhetoric is one reason as to why these threats are so widespread, says Dr. Adams. 

“I’d say we typically have a pretty civil environment where people can agree to disagree,” says Dr. Adams. “I would hope that would continue, but that being said, we’ve clearly seen on a national scale increasing online and in-person terroristic threats and intimidation, and you can’t ignore that, you know?”