In December, I wrote about a story out of California regarding a brave student who received severe bullying for her involvement with TPUSA. Kaylee Barkley has endured harassment, discrimination, and cruelty from her peers, and the school has encouraged and allowed it to happen. “She was the target of the whole school,” her mom said.
Kaylee has been consistently bullied for over a year now, and her parents have brought these issues before the school board multiple times. The situation did not improve, so they decided to pull Kaylee out of Los Osos in early February 2022 and homeschool her for her own safety.
When Kaylee first started the TPUSA chapter at Los Osos, a Zoom meeting was scheduled with the Dean of Discipline and the Principal. During this meeting, Kaylee’s parents were listening. The Dean of Discipline told the chapter’s founding members that TPUSA was not welcome on campus, and they had to change the name. “The moment you step foot on campus as a TPUSA member, you will be a homophobic, racist, and sexist, and people will hate you,” she said. The Dean further explained, “That is going to make your life really hard.” When Kaylee’s father interrupted, the Dean began backpedaling on her threatening statements as she realized a parent was present.
After speaking at her school board meeting in August, the bullying intensified. She was shoved and tripped in the hallways. A teacher showed a video of Kaylee’s school board speech to one of her classes and instructed the students to “make it uncomfortable for people like Kaylee to be on campus.”
In Kaylee’s speech and debate class, a student threatened to hit Kaylee with her gavel, and the rest of the class cheered and encouraged her to actually do it. The teacher sat there complacently as Kaylee left the classroom crying. Her parents were made aware of this incident, and they called the teacher. When asked if he would have handled the situation differently looking back, he said “absolutely not” and hung up the phone.
The bullying did not stop when she left campus for the day. Keyboard warriors attacked her through comments, messages, and posts on her own personal account, as well as her parent’s. Comments like, “Your racist, homophobic daughter has the option for online school” flooded her inbox. Another one on Janal Barkley’s account read, “Disgusting. You raised a hateful human being.” An Instagram account with the username “Anti_TPUSA” was created in opposition to TPUSA being a club at Los Osos and contributed to the bullying. The account is no longer on Instagram’s platform.
If the tables were turned and Kaylee was bullying the leftists, this story would not have looked the same. Kids are bound to be mean to one another, but it is expected that the school is to stand up for the victim in that situation, regardless of their political views. If an anti-BLM or Anti-ANTIFA group was created in a school, it would be shut down immediately by the school administration. The people who so relentlessly bullied Kaylee are so worried that Kaylee will hurt someone’s feelings with her conservative values that they viciously attack her in the name of kindness.
We often see that the people who preach the virtue of tolerance the loudest are the ones who are the most intolerant. Unfortunately, intolerance is a common trait among angry young leftists, which is why the work we do at Turning Point USA is so important. To be brave like Kaylee, go to TPUSA.com/getinvolved.
