Junior Elysia Morales, the former vice president of Turning Point USA at Saint Mary’s College and Indiana national committeewoman for College Republicans of America, has stepped down from both her roles, as first reported in a recent story in The Wall Street Journal.
Following the publication, Morales has faced hundreds of comments of backlash in various online forums. In an interview with The Observer, she said that she has always had reservations about both organizations.
“Originally, College Republicans of America was only put in place because we were not allowed to have Turning Point. So once Turning Point got approved, we all switched over to Turning Point, because we were still operating within Turning Point off campus,” she said.
According to the College’s director of communications Lisa Knox, the College’s chapter was approved because it met all the College’s values for student organizations, including civic responsibility, dialogue and community building.
“As an institution of higher learning, Saint Mary’s has always dedicated itself to free expression and the respectful exchange of ideas. We apply a consistent review process to any and all club applications to ensure that the organization is aligned with the mission and values. Clubs are expected to be non-discriminatory, open to all membership, and committed to respectful engagement,” Knox wrote.
Nursing professor Rick Becker, the TPUSA chapter’s advisor, said that the chapter started as an opportunity for students to be more politically active on campus, focusing primarily on forming social ties on campus.
“I knew that the College Republicans were up and running when I got here, so that seemed to fill the gap for students of a more conservative worldview … But I do think that TPUSA, especially because of its particular outreach to and energizing that college age cohort ... that the students were very excited about the idea of it starting up,” he said.
Morales said that TPUSA’s mission of creating a campus environment that allows students to discuss their ideologies initially drew her to the club.
“Even if we were in disagreement, the commitment to discuss, debate and critique, to not just better ourselves, but to better our party and to better our political climate, that was what was important to me, never just solely the ideals,” she said.
As vice president of the College’s TPUSA chapter, she managed events, coordinated with the local GOP and maintained relationships with chapter members.
“I think at the core of our chapter was just maintaining relationships and making people feel safe,” she said. “[We are] giving them an outlet to talk about things that are not accepted, sometimes, within certain environments at the College.”
She reflected that she has always given her close friends the benefit of the doubt in political conversations. However, the increasingly hostile rhetoric from both political parties led to her departure from the club.
“I can’t sit idly by when the rhetoric is out of control from both sides of the aisle without wanting to make some change,” she said.
The new Saint Mary’s TPUSA president, senior Macy Gunnell, argued the club is determined to continue in their mission despite pushback.
“Leftist students have attempted to silence, intimidate and discourage us for four years now. Their continuing pushback only fuels our fire to build our presence on campus even more. These liberal tantrums prove to me, I, as a conservative leader on campus, am doing something right. We will continue, unbothered,” Gunnell wrote.
In her most recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Morales was described as once being “all-in for the MAGA movement,” but now “her support for Trump is at a newfound low.” She said that the former statement is not true and she never fully was engrossed into any political party.
“I have never been all in for any political candidate or any political ideology ever. I voted for Democrats, I voted for Republicans, so that's the first thing I’d like to correct,” Morales explained.
She said she agreed to be featured in The Wall Street Journal because she knew that there may be others who are scared to speak up or show a change of political values. As a woman of color with conservative ideas, she described being censored by peers at times because of her political background.
“I think staff, my peers and administrators, have assumed my beliefs without talking to me and painted me to be a traitor to my own race and undeserving of the same ability to converse and discuss,” Morales said. “I’ve absolutely been censored at times, I’ve been told that I make people feel unsafe. I'm not negating how you feel, but I pause because you don’t know me. You've heard things about me, but you’ve never made an attempt to converse with me.”
Morales said she plans to move forward by building relationships and creating political dialogue for people to see different perspectives outside of their own and hopes to focus on immigration policy in the future.
Gunnell wrote to The Observer that former treasurer, junior Sabrina Olivarez, and former first-year representative, freshman Jadyn Johnson, will become co-vice presidents of the chapter.
“We love Elysia and are unequivocally supportive of her departure to pursue more middle-ground means of political activism,” she wrote. “It would be hypocritical of us as advocates of free speech to try and censure her conservative ideals — even and especially those that may not align with that of TPUSA.”
