‘Degenerate and Murderous’: California Campus Republicans’ Platform Attacks College Culture

Hector Amezcua, AP Images

The California College Republicans’ new platform says the state’s campuses are rife with what the group considers “degenerate” behavior. The document takes aim at university funding of birth control and abortion, the legitimizing of transgender people, and institutional support of Mexican and Muslim student organizations that the group accuses of being “ethnonationalist” and anti-Semitic.

“In addition, ethnic, women’s, and sexually deviant ‘community centers’ and ‘theme dormitories’ that engender ethnic nationalism, racial animus and encourage degenerate behavior go against everything we believe as conservatives, and we flatly refuse to fund them,” reads the 2018 platform, released this month.

The statewide group has chapters at several University of California campuses as well as at other prominent institutions, including Stanford University.

Much of the platform is inflammatory, sure to provoke opposition from liberal, moderate, and even some conservative students.

Jeffrey L. Kidder, an associate professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University who studies politics on campus, said the group’s “combative tone” and objects of attack were noteworthy. Kidder wrote in an email that it was “remarkable” how at odds the platform was with conservative students as a whole.

“Specifically, the mantra we have been hearing over and over again is ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative.’ The CCR platform is about as far from that as possible.”

Kidder wrote he was certain that many “non-conservative” students would consider parts of the document “hate speech.”

Since the election of President Trump, conservative students have wrestled with how to respond to the national Republican Party’s embrace of hard-right rhetoric. While some might focus on volunteering in local races, others prefer a more antagonistic approach, like organizing campus events to rile leftist students. Many in California have chosen the latter option.

Kimo Gandall, 21, is an undergraduate at the University of California at Irvine studying political science and a member of the California College Republicans. He told The Chronicle the platform had been written by students in conservative groups around the state.

The platform is meant to attract attention, he said, but its purpose was not to troll. It’s supposed to serve as a sort of guide for the state’s college Republicans because there hasn’t been one in the past. “This type of thing had come up far earlier during the election of Trump,” Gandall said. “So this thing has been in the works for a while.”

Gandall, who said he was a senior aide to the state organization’s chairwoman, Ariana Rowlands — a bomb thrower in her own right — said the group was aware of the pushback it would receive for comments that many would consider racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced.

And he said those people would be wrong. The document, Gandall said, isn’t discriminating against anyone. Rather, the goal is to say that “people should have liberties” and that conservatives shouldn’t be forced to fund the “degeneracy” of others.

The 10-page document takes jabs at many of higher education’s well-worn punching bags: Universities need to do a better job of protecting the First Amendment, students who arrived in America illegally should be deported, and the market — not the government — should be relied upon to reduce the cost of college.

‘They Are Objectively Evil’

It’s in the second section, titled “Administrative and Academic Bias,” that the campus Republicans make the most inflammatory claims. The document decries organizations dedicated to Muslim students and those that advocate for Palestinians. It accuses these groups of anti-Semitism and claims they have ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood through other national advocacy groups.

“Those groups are pandering hate, they’re pandering anti-American values,” Gandall said. “They’re totalitarian. And fundamentally we believe they are objectively evil.”

It’s unclear how many conservative students in California would actually support the platform. Campus Republicans at California State University at Fullerton broke with the state organization in September over “troublesome” personality issues in the group’s leadership, according to its campus newspaper, The Daily Titan.

Predictably, college Democrats have denounced the document. Josh Donner, president of California College Democrats, said the platform shows the group is disconnected from “the next generation of voters.”

“The platform demonizes the LGBTQ community, undocumented students, Muslims, and countless others,” Donner said. “This platform calls anything it disagrees with ‘deviant.’ It’s ridiculous and hateful.”

Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego, told The Chronicle that the language in the document was more “strident and confrontational” than what she had encountered from the “vast majority of college students.” And while it appears the students researched the topics, Binder said she was surprised at the tone.

“Terms like ‘degenerate and murderous,’ ‘fascist-minded,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘mental illness masquerading as transgenderism,’ and so on may win them points on conservative media platforms and with some politicians (including President Trump?), but will certainly not help their cause on college campuses,” Binder wrote in an email. “Selecting those particular terms speaks to what they aim to be doing — which I discern is trying to get the attention of media pundits on the right.”

College conservatives have long strived to push the boundary, Binder wrote. It used to be that events like affirmative-action bake sales, where conservative students would sell baked goods at different prices to people of different races, would be enough to rile. But when a president’s approval rating within his party remains strong despite racially charged statements, it makes sense that the conservatives would up the ante, she said.

Among other possibilities, Binder said, it could be that the students are trying to signal their support for Trump to future political campaigns that might sympathize with the president, or they’re trying to match his rhetoric. Regardless, Binder said, she suspects their efforts might ultimately cost them.

At least one group has gotten on board with the new platform. The Stanford University College Republicans, which recently made headlines when a confrontation turned physical, endorsed the platform on Facebook. “SCR is exceedingly proud that our parent organization, the California College Republicans, has adopted what is without a doubt the most conservative platform of its history.”

Chris Quintana is a staff reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.

Correction (10/22/2018, 1:43 p.m.): This article originally misstated a comment by Professor Kidder of Northern Illinois University. He said he was sure many “non-conservative” students, not “non-progressive” students, would consider parts of the California College Republicans’ platform to be “hate speech.” The article has been updated to reflect that.