Sydney Martinez, Campus Carrier news editor

Charlie Kirk, conservative political activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot while speaking at an event hosted at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. This event was one of the first of his 14-day “American Comeback Tour,” during which he challenged opponents to debate him on political issues.

Students who aligned with Kirk’s political views and wanted to mourn his death held a worship night open to the Berry community. This event was held at Barnwell Chapel at 9 p.m. on Sept. 16 and lasted over an hour.

“I was never into [politics] until I found Charlie,” a student said at the worship night. “And Charlie gave us peace because his name, his message, his speech wasn’t just about personal gain, it was one of a good, happy life. What happened to Charlie was horrible, and the family that he left behind, the people that loved him, who didn’t know him [were hurt when he passed].”

There was a mix of students, staff and faculty who attended to mourn Kirk through song and prayer. Over 100 students attended the worship service throughout the night.

“There were people there that just came out of reaction and kind of reflection on our generation and our country [which] stemmed from Charlie Kirk being killed,” graduate student and former president of The Turning Point USA chapter at Berry, Amanda Milner (25C) said. “Especially for Christians, our reaction to hard times and things that make us angry, we believe in reacting to that with togetherness and with prayer.”

Bob Reimer, the Elvin and Fleta Patterson Sims director for the Berry Center for Integrity in Leadership, was asked to speak at the event by a group of students who organized the event. He said that he spoke that night to share his message of concern for the nation and our community, and to spread a message of hope.

“That hope is from the standpoint of worship and faith,” Reimer said. “The central explicit message that I shared was that in Him, there’s life, there’s joy and there’s peace. No violence, no grief and no sin can ever take [that] away. The idea is that here’s a call to prayer and here’s an opportunity for us to think about beginning change, and that change can begin within ourselves.”

Milner said that she and a group of her friends organized the event because they all heard others on campus shared similar feelings to theirs.

“It was people who started talking to friends about the same feelings,” Milner said. “And as Christians, we wanted to get together, and it ended up being over 100 people that said they were coming to share [those feelings] and respond in prayer and worship together.”

Milner and her friends felt the need for a worship night to create a space to not only grieve Kirk’s death, but also show support for those concerned about the aftermath of the assassination.

“[Kirk’s] organization is a conservative-valued organization,” Milner said. “We have a population of students that vote that way, think that way, align that way. And in addition to those students, I think there have also been a lot of people who don’t really know about governmental, political ideologies and don’t really know much about Charlie and don’t really know much about his organization, but they saw that what has gone on is just a step in the wrong, evil direction and that we need some healing and some restoration.”

This event sparked a variety of reactions across campus from students. Students living in Dana and Thomas Berry reported they received flyers slipped under their doors with a photo of Kirk promoting the worship night.

“I agree kind of with what they’re doing, [but] I disagree with their approach,” senior Bailey Casey said. “So, handing out flyers of just Charlie Kirk’s face the day after a shooting and it saying ‘pray for our [country]’ when everyone’s in this turmoil of what should actually be going on, I think, is really divisive and really dividing.”

Flyers opposing worship night were hung across campus, which directly quoted statements Kirk made in 2023. The top of the flyer read: “Straight from the Charlie Horse’s mouth.”

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational,” the flyer quotes Kirk as saying.

President of the Young Democrats, Damian Marko, said he did not approve of the worship night’s marketing strategy, however, he does believe that people should have the ability to worship through any means.

“I will be the first person to be the front rudder for religious freedom,” Marko said. “However, worshiping who is the question. I don’t understand the worship of somebody who was heinous toward other people and had a certain ideology that excluded certain people like minorities, people of color, women and trans people from the conversation of having liberties, just as anybody else.”

Michael Bailey, associate professor of political science, said Kirk’s death has already influenced the political climate in the United States. He pointed to Vice President JD Vance’s call for employers to expose those who are saying things he sees as unacceptable concerning Kirk’s assassination, for the purpose of firing them.

“That just has an enormous chilling effect on speech when you have the president and the president’s press secretary [who] have said that they’re going to go after the kinds of groups that caused this death,” Bailey said. “President Trump, in his own rhetoric, said that the extreme rhetoric of leftist groups was directly, not indirectly, not tangentially, [but] directly responsible for [Kirk’s] death.”

Bailey explained that the administration, as a result of Trump’s rhetoric, therefore feels that it can justify “going after” leftist groups or bringing these groups to Trump’s attention.

“This, to me, is terrifying,” Bailey said. “This is utterly inappropriate in a free and liberal society.”

Before being turned in, Tyler Robinson told his parents he shot Kirk because “there is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate,” according to the charging documents.

Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University, Sam Fuller (17C), said that existing political science research suggests that the people who support political violence are mostly concentrated among young people. He said that other research shows that young people are predisposed to propaganda through the consumption of social media.

“In the case of the man accused of the Kirk assassination, the fact that he fell down those sorts of rabbit holes with [far right] pipelines, assuming that’s true, we have to think ‘no one is immune to propaganda,’” Fuller said. “They’re trying to convince him of some ideology.”

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed a resolution that declared Oct. 14 as the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.

“I think that it’s a frightening reminder that political violence is becoming very common,” Marko said. “It’s a shame that he had to die based on the things that he was promoting.”