Missouri State GOP official tells Campus Reform ‘woke state universities,’ should start to ‘feel some squeeze’

Chandler Haynes, Grassroots Coordinator of Missouri’s State Republican Party, condemned bias in higher education and said state legislators are willing to take action against schools that engage in “insane behavior.”  

In an interview with Campus Reform, Haynes criticized state schools that “are busy indoctrinating . . . young adults into ideologies that are not just anti-American, but anti the values of the parents that send those kids to those schools.”

“Missouri’s education problems are the same as the problems everywhere else. . . . If it’s a day ending in ‘Y,’ there’s some woke state university that’s trying to do something that’s antithetical to American values, conservatism, or even just plain decency and common sense,” he continued.

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Haynes cited the case of a disabled white veteran whom Haynes said had applied for a program in Missouri State University, which is located in Springfield, and was rejected on the basis of his skin color. “[W]e learned that they were excluding ethnically white people . . . It’s one of those things where they say, ‘This is a conference for women, minorities . . . the BIPOC coalition . . .  if we say ‘It’s for everybody, except for white people,’ that’s just another way of saying white people aren’t welcome.”

“We took [the story] to some local news media, and we got the school to back off on it,” he continued.

Speaking about the potential for students to be disillusioned with radicalism on their campuses, Haynes said: “[Y]ou may have thought that you were joining a student organization that was really interested in the environment and conservation, but you go to their meetings, and all that the crazy communist that’s in charge of it can talk about is how the Palestinians are going to rise up and overthrow Israel.” Describing how a student might feel about such a situation, he said: “‘Wait, what is this? This isn’t what I believe in, this doesn’t reflect my values.’”

“We’re gonna be there to catch those people and welcome them into our movement with open arms,” he added.

Haynes also condemned cancel culture, saying: “It’s not fun, you don’t want to be looked at as someone that’s outside of normal society, you don’t want to be looked at as someone that’s a freak. The left throws around [the words] . . .  racism, sexism, and bigotry like you throw rice grains at a wedding.”

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Haynes described the college experience today as “aggressively, heavily leftist,” citing the anti-Semitic sentiments expressed broadly on campuses as well as bias against conservative students, stating: “If you’re not even allowed to be a Jewish person [who says] ‘I think Israel should have the right to exist’ . . . [then] you’re definitely not allowed to be a social conservative that takes issue with things like abortion, gay marriage” because “the environment is so anti-free speech and so anti-conservative on college campuses that people that just want their ethnic group and their nation to have the right to exist and defend itself–Those people are persecuted.”

Speaking of potential solutions that the Missouri GOP could pursue, Haynes said: “Many legislators have been watching the woking of education . . .  And there’s a large contingent of representatives that want to dedicate some legislative power and legislative time to making sure that these schools are more answerable to the state when they do things that are horribly racist,” referencing the case of the disabled white veteran who was initially rejected from a program at Missouri State University.

“So we want these schools to feel some squeeze . . . if a school does something blatantly racist with taxpayer dollars, they ought to be held to account for that. So applying some financial pressures to the university funding system to [disincentivize] insane behavior like that is . . . one of the things we want to see done in the state house.”