Barron Trump’s Enrollment at NYU Sparks Surge in College Republican Club Membership
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Donald Trump’s election victory and his youngest son Barron’s enrollment at New York University (NYU) have sparked a surge in membership for the College Republican Club at the university, according to The New York Post. The NYU campus has seen an increase in students proudly wearing MAGA hats, with many inquiring about Barron, a freshman at the Stern School of Business.
Kaya Walker, president of NYU’s College Republican Club, explained, “Interest was piqued initially by the fact that Barron Trump had matriculated as a student at our business school, but the election motivated a lot of people to act.” She continued, “It’s more curiosity than anything. People would come up to us and ask us, ‘Oh, is Barron in the club?’”
Walker also shared that Barron, at 18 years old, has become somewhat of a campus spectacle. “I feel bad for him more than anything. He’s kind of hard to miss. He’s very tall. People post pictures of him in class on their Instagram Story, and I think that’s really strange.” However, she added, “He’s not a member, but we’d love to have him.”
The influx of interest in the College Republican Club at NYU reflects a broader shift in conservative student activism, particularly after Trump’s 2024 election win. Walker noted, “This election made a lot of people more optimistic about the future of conservatism in general,” even on a liberal campus like NYU.
It’s not just NYU where this shift is occurring. At Pennsylvania State University, the vice president of the College Republicans, Tristin Kilgore, revealed that the club’s membership has doubled to 200 active members post-election. He attributed this growth to the students’ frustration with pandemic restrictions, saying, “We were in high school, and it was a really tough time.
We’re not supporting the people who were in favor of keeping us away from our friends and away from our schools.” Other universities have reported similar trends. Alexander Richmond, president of the University of Michigan’s chapter, noted that “people are rejecting the status quo of what we would normally think is the [left-wing] culture and bias on campus.”
Membership at the University of North Carolina’s Republican Club surged from 120 to 250, according to president Matthew Trott. At Babson College, club president Neko Kady said, “There is definitely an increase in pro-Republican sentiment… we even had kids walking around with MAGA hats in the library.”
Online, some users praised these Republican student groups, with one commenting, “You would be stupid not to try to be friends or in Barron’s circle if you are at his school.”
