Two Black students faced disciplinary action for their commentary on the death of right-wing podcaster and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed on Wednesday, September 10, in Utah.
After back-to-back incidents at separate colleges in Texas, both students have been disenrolled from the universities. The first was after allegedly disrupting a vigil for Kirk, while the second was for mocking Kirk’s death during a campus memorial event for Kirk. According to the footage, both of the students are Black.
During the first incident, on Friday, September 12, an 18-year-old Texas Tech student was arrested during a vigil for Kirk. In footage circulating online, a female student can be seen heckling those gathered for the vigil with taunts that included, “F— y’all homie dead, he got shot in the head.”
According to reports obtained by USA Today, she was arrested by Texas Tech Police and is now facing a misdemeanor simple assault charge and was later booked into the Lubbock County jail. She was released on bond the next day. Whether her incident escalated beyond a verbal exchange remains unclear. Although she is no longer a student at the school, it’s unclear whether she was expelled or dropped out.
The footage circulating prompted Texas’s governor Greg Abbot to call for disciplinary action.
“Definitely picked the wrong school to taunt the death of Charlie Kirk,” he wrote in a post on X that shared footage of the incident and an update about her arrest.
On Monday, September 15, during a Turning Point USA gathering in Kirk’s honor at Texas State University in San Marcos, a student walked through the crowd repeatedly slapping his neck, mimicking getting shot in the neck and saying he was Kirk.
In footage circulating of the incident online, he can be heard saying, “Charlie Kirk got hit in the neck, b—” before he goes to the front of the event and pretends to die as Kirk did. During this event, a student was also reportedly spitting on TPUSA members.
Just as Abbot addressed the first incident over the weekend, he was quick to address the incident on Monday.
“Hey Texas State, this conduct is not accepted at our schools. Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassination must have consequences,” he wrote in a post on Tuesday.
Soon after, it was announced that the student was no longer enrolled, KSAT 12 reported. Both incidents have drawn widespread attention, given they arrive as many in several sectors have faced disciplinary action for their reactions to Kirk’s death. This week alone, journalist Karen Attiah said she was fired from the Washington Post’s opinion section for reposting Kirk’s words on social media. Meanwhile, in a moment that has left many outraged and reeling, Jimmy Kimmel’s show was paused indefinitely after he addressed his death in a recent episode.
