Republican students at Yale have gone to war with each other over whether to endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Harvard’s Republicans grabbed headlines a week ago when its members repudiated Trump’s candidacy over his provocative rhetoric and less-traditional positions on the issues. Earlier this week, Yale’s College Republicans took a very different approach, announcing they were endorsing Trump. The group justified the decision by saying that, as a Republican group, it existed to back Republicans at all levels.
“While not every member of our organization supported Trump in the primary, as an organization and branch of the GOP we support Republicans up and down the ballot. And yes, that includes supporting Donald Trump for president,” the group said in a statement.
But instead of uniting Yale conservatives behind Trump, the endorsement has seems to have destroyed the Yale College Republicans. Several members of the group have quit and started up their own anti-Trump group, the Yale New Republicans.
“Many among the Yale College Republicans’ ranks did not see this endorsement as the best decision,” the new group said in a statement posted to its brand-new Facebook page. “These members have since regrouped and set out to form the Yale New Republicans, a more active Republican organization on campus that will always put national interests above partisan ones.”
The New Republicans aren’t the only schismatic conservative group at Yale. Another group, Yale Undergraduate Conservatives Against Trump (YUCAT), formed this week as well, and has announced that it plans to campaign on behalf of a third-party presidential candidate to be determined.
“It is not only sad to see that the YCR’s leadership would affirm the party line over principle, but would also be willing to send the world the message that Yale conservatives are a bunch of sell-outs,” YUCAT founder Alexander Michaud told the Yale Free Press.
The original College Republicans group has avoided hostile rhetoric towards the new groups.
“We welcome the addition of new political groups at Yale and applaud the students who wish to exercise their rights of free speech and assembly,” the group said on Facebook. “We will always welcome dissenting opinions on campus because we believe Yale is a setting in which its students should not be afraid to voice their views or challenge their peers.”
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