A Student Leader Resigns at Texas State After Being Accused of Taking Money From Turning Point USA

A student-government presidency has been toppled — after accusations that the president improperly took campaign donations “under the table” from Turning Point USA.

Texas State University’s student-body president, Brooklyn Boreing, abruptly stepped down earlier this month. Her decision came 12 days after one of her former opponents confronted her at an August 27 student-government meeting. Elijah Miller accused Boreing’s campaign of secretly accepting $2,800 and 25 loaned iPads from Turning Point USA, a conservative group known for quietly aiding dozens of student-government candidates around the country.

The Chronicle first wrote about Turning Point’s active role in student races last year. At the time, Turning Point’s founder and executive director, Charlie Kirk, denied that there was a stealth effort underway to get conservatives elected to these positions.

“That’s completely ludicrous and ridiculous, that there’s some sort of secret plan,” Kirk said.

Yet Turning Point crafted a 28-page brochure for donors that described, in great detail, its clandestine plan to “commandeer the top office of Student Body President at each of the most recognizable and influential American universities.”

Several student campaigns around the country have been derailed after student newspapers reported on the links between Turning Point and certain candidates — at the University of Maryland at College Park, the Turning Point-backed slate of candidates suddenly quit the race. At the University of Oregon, Turning Point’s preferred candidate was soundly rejected by students at the polls.

Texas State, however, may be the first instance of a Turning Point-supported candidate’s having to step down months after securing victory. Brooklyn Boreing won her race there in February.

In addition to being publicly accused by Miller, Boreing was the subject of several hard-hitting stories in the campus paper, The University Star.

In August, the student paper reported that Boreing’s former chief of staff, Collin Pruett, identified himself as a Turning Point USA employee on his LinkedIn profile. He listed his position as a “leadership representative” for the group’s Campus Leadership Project, which focuses on student elections.

Turning Point USA did not respond to an email from The Chronicle on Friday seeking comment about the student-government upheaval at Texas State.

Questions of Truth

At Texas State, and many other campuses where Turning Point has gotten involved, accepting funding from outside organizations is against the rules.

“How dare you claim to care about this university but lie and cheat to get into a position of leadership?” Miller told Boreing at the August meeting.

Neither Boreing nor her vice-presidential running mate, Ruben Becerra Jr., immediately responded to emails from The Chronicle requesting comment. Boreing’s resignation letter, dated September 8, did not address the allegation that she had received improper help from Turning Point USA. Instead, the letter focused on how student leaders had become the target of “threats of personal and even physical attack.”

“It has come to the point where the truth does not matter, let alone my truth,” she wrote. “The only truth that exists is the one that is painted of me. So while this has been one of the greatest joys of my life, it has also caused me great personal strife. I am willing to serve and sacrifice for the student body, but I am no longer willing to continue to put myself at personal risk.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Miller said, “A lot of people are like, ‘Well, she never admitted it, we might just never know.’ And I’m like, what do you mean we might just never know?”

“She never confirmed nor denied it,” he said. “To me, that’s confirmation.”

Deep Pockets

Miller said that he had learned of his campaign rival’s improper spending from some of her own supporters, and that he suspected they felt guilty about the rule breaking they had witnessed. Miller said he and Boreing had been personal friends, and at first that friendship might have blinded him to the irregularities that surfaced during the campaign.

For one, he said, Boreing’s campaign had deep pockets from the very start. At the outset of campaigning, Boreing was flush with swag, T-shirts, signs — even a venue for their campaign party, he said.

But Miller said his campaign had to wait several weeks to get those kinds of goodies because it took time to raise money from students. When voting commenced, Boreing’s campaign had a large supply of iPads that students could vote on, with a Boreing campaign worker urging them to pick her.

Boreing won with 52 percent of the vote, and according to Miller, her extra resources were decisive.

“I have no doubt in my mind that without their extra help, especially the iPads, we would have won,” Miller said. “And even with their help, they barely won. The election was definitely not only tampered with but was swayed by the assistance that they got.”

Following Boreing’s resignation, her vice president, Becerra, has become the new student-body president.

It is unclear at this point if Becerra had any knowledge of Turning Point’s alleged involvement in the campaign, but regardless of that question, the turmoil at Texas State is still casting a cloud over the future.

Claudia Gasponi, a senator in the student government, said that the scandal had prompted a series of unflattering front-page stories in the campus newspaper and that students had reacted with “almost entirely disgust, disdain.”

“There’s a huge distrust of student government now,” she said. “We have like 20 open seats and four open director positions, and we have had almost no applications for either because people just don’t want to be affiliated with something that is getting such bad coverage.”

Gasponi said that concerns over Turning Point’s role in Texas State student government date back several years. With this latest controversy, Gasponi said she’s determined to ferret out the facts, and is pushing legislation that would open a formal student-government investigation into what happened with Turning Point USA and the February election.

“The candidates who let them into student government, they create a bad name for us,” Gasponi said. “They set up a precedent for corruption, not only for themselves but for our student government.”

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.