Lariat documents continued reaction to Baylor TPUSA event

The fallout over a Turning Point USA event at Baylor University a week ago continues, with the founder of Baylor’s TPUSA chapter saying he wouldn’t have let this happen.

Ollie Mintz, who graduated from Baylor in 2022, founded the campus chapter of TPUSA, a conservative political action group started by Charlie Kirk with help from former Baylor President Ken Starr.

Mintz wrote a letter to the Lariat, the student newspaper, explaining how it took him three years and multiple charter denials before he was allowed to start the official student group.

“Within weeks, I hosted Charlie Kirk at the Waco Convention Center. Charlie was admitted to Baylor before founding TPUSA. He met with President Ken Starr, who told him to pursue his passion instead. That meeting helped launch the organization. Baylor is part of the origin story. The room was packed, open to the public and the press was welcome,” he wrote.

“I have no current ties to TPUSA. I graduated and I’m now a law student at Creighton. But when I saw the April 22 tour stop approaching, I reached out to Peter Fernandez, the current chapter president. He never responded.”

As BNG reported, Fernandez mocked a counter-event happening across campus the night of the TPUSA rally in Waco Hall.

Mintz takes issue with that attitude and with the facts of how the April 22 event came to be on campus.

“Fernandez told KWTX the event was ‘two years in the making.’ It wasn’t. He became president around fall 2024. By his own words in this newspaper in October 2025, the chapter was ‘almost dead’ when he took over. The revival came from Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025, generating over 200 membership requests overnight. His window of leading an active chapter was roughly seven months.”

Then Mintz recounts what happened in Waco Hall April 22, how community members and media were denied access to the room, how Donald Trump Jr. cancelled as a speaker and was replaced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a current political candidate for U.S. Senate.

“Four hundred thirty-eight students checked in to a room that seats 2,200. Black drapes hid the empty back half. The balcony sat dark. Supporters who drove hours were turned away while seats sat vacant,” he wrote. “Leaked audio showed the chapter president mocking fellow Baylor students at the counter-event as ‘the ops.’”

“You don’t fight for free speech by banning student journalists.”

None of this is acceptable, Mintz said. “I built something real at this university. If I were still carrying a TPUSA title, what happened on April 22 would have been enough for me to walk away. You don’t fight for free speech by banning student journalists. You don’t build a movement by turning away supporters who drove hours to be there. And you don’t honor Charlie Kirk’s legacy mocking fellow students in a half-empty room.”

Student journalists at the Lariat have continued to follow up on reaction to the “This Is the Turning Point” rally and the alternative “All Are Neighbors” event. In an April 29 article, Lariat reporter Mackenzie Grizzard cites student reaction not only to Fernandez but also speaker Benny Johnson, who compared liberal women to pigs and said Democratic men aren’t virile enough to father children.

The article quotes Truett Seminary student Kyle Perry responding to Johnson: “I think we can make a position based on our religious values without being mean-hearted, mean-spirited or rude about it and degrading people.”

The article also cites Johnson’s comment that: “Nine billion people can’t just move to America, and suddenly you’re an American. We’re more than just tax cattle for globalists; we’re a people and a culture, and we have a history. And we’re proud of that damn history. And that history is European Christianism. That’s what built this country.”

The executive leadership of Baylor’s TPUSA chapter told the Lariat they stand behind Johnsons’ comments.

TPUSA chapter Vice President Jessica Frausto said she is not against legal immigration, as her great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico and Italy.

“I agree with Mr. Johnson when he states that as a country, we do have a culture and certain standards that need to be upheld,” Frausto told the Lariat. “It is my opinion that not all cultures are compatible with Western civilization. It is hard to preserve a specific set of values when you have a mass influx of cultures who refuse to assimilate.”

Frausto also told the newspaper while she wasn’t a fan of Johnson’s comment referring to liberal women as “pigs,” she understood it was a joke, and that it “comes down to a preference of comedy.” she said. “I think it is up to the individual whether they want to take offense to the joke or not.”

Fernandez told the Lariat he also agreed with Johnson’s statement that moving to America doesn’t necessarily “make you American.”

“As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I agree with Mr. Johnson’s statement,” Fernandez said. “Moving here isn’t what makes someone an American. Frankly, even being born here doesn’t quite cut it, and I say that because there are plenty of U.S.-born citizens who hate this country and want to see it radically changed. Those people are not American either.”

TPUSA chapter Secretary Quinn Bradshaw, who was born in China and raised in America, also concurred: “I agree with Benny Johnson that just because a person physically moves to America on the map does not mean they can instantly claim American culture. This is because the person has not yet assimilated into our culture/way of life, which is deeply rooted in our history. I would like to add that people who move to America can and are invited to embrace our culture.”

Tanish Singh, one of the organizers of “All Are Neighbors,” told the Lariat he found Johnson’s comments “morally reprehensible.”

“Even if it was a ‘joke,’ I believe it was irresponsible, misogynistic and anti-American,” Singh said.

And Hanna Al-Hayek, another organizer of “All Are Neighbors,” told the Lariat: “It’s important to note that Turning Point USA claims to be backed up with conservative Christian values, yet they chose to spend their time insulting and discriminating against women and minorities who, alongside each of them, according to Christianity, were made in the image of God.”

 

Related articles:

Baylor TPUSA chapter president mocks ‘All Are Neighbors’ event

438 Baylor students checked in at TPUSA event Wednesday

‘All Are Neighbors’ celebrates diversity and inclusion

TPUSA drives a bus over Baylor and then backs up to do it again | Opinion by Mark Wingfield