Campus organizations at Taylor University can no longer be nationally affiliated after Fall 2025, wrote Skip Trudeau, vice president for Student Development, in a campus-wide email on Dec. 8, 2025.
The new policy change primarily impacted three student-led clubs that were approved before the policy was announced— Turning Point USA (TPUSA), Changing Health Attitudes and Actions to Recreate Girls (CHAARG) and Taylor For Life.
Taylor For Life decided not to pursue national affiliation before the mandate was announced, said junior biblical literature and psychology major and co-founder Alaina Ventry.
“We got approved this past Summer, before any decision was made by Taylor about outside organizations. However, I think this is part of what got the ball rolling on the recent decisions that they announced,” said Ventry.
Since TPUSA and CHAARG wished to associate with their externally associated counterparts, Taylor allowed them to receive official affiliation for two years before requiring them to reapply as Taylor-focused clubs without national affiliation, Annabeth Eggebeen, student Senate member and junior politics and public service major, said.
The Senate had not voted on any decisions about external affiliation or known of the policy change before its announcement, Eggebeen said. She hopes to learn more about how this affects Taylor’s process of forming clubs moving forward.
“We were informed of the policy with the rest of the student body,” she said. “We are still looking at and thinking through how it will be executed.”
Andrew Roth, sophomore accounting and finance major, is the president of the TPUSA chapter at Taylor. He was not expecting the policy announcement, as it was released after the club was approved. A previous attempt to start the same club had failed in 2021, and he thought their current attempt had finally gone through, so he felt especially surprised at the new change.
“We didn’t expect to get approved only for a certain time,” Roth said. “But we’re happy with what we can get.”
Changing attitudes about politics nationally and at Taylor contributed to TPUSA’s approval by the Student Senate in 2025, he said. The graduation of current cabinet members before the two years are up poses a challenge for the future of the club, Roth said.
Sydney Vargo, the president of CHAARG and a sophomore human physiology and preventative medicine major at Taylor, was disappointed when the policy was first announced but grew to believe that the change could be an agent for good. She submitted the application for CHAARG this summer and was unsure if it had been approved as a student organization before the new policy announcement.
“I thought the announcement closed the door for CHAARG to happen,” she said. “But the Lord revealed to me over winter break the words of John 15: ‘Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes.’ This may be an open door to make it more fruitful than I ever pictured.”
Leadership of the club is in a bit of a “waiting period” for future direction, with her acting as a liaison between the CHAARG organization and Taylor’s policymakers, Vargo said.
Future directions for TPUSA and CHAARG will be determined as more details of the policy are shared with the student body.
“We’ll figure out what to do two years from now, but it’s hard to plan for that,” Roth said.
The process to create student clubs at Taylor is a lengthy application process, Eggebeen said. It includes potential interviews with the Student Senate and separate consultations with the Student Life Committee and Trudeau. These consultations discuss how the club’s purpose aligns with the Taylor’s statements of faith and living.
While the new policy will impact which student organizations are present at Taylor in the future, it is not meant to discourage students from creating them or going through the process, Eggebeen said.
Eggebeen encourages students to come to her or fellow Student Senate member Abigail Vliestra if they have additional questions.
“Student Senate is still looking out for TPUSA and CHAARG as they move forward,” Eggebeen said. “We hope that they and other students reaching out can feel heard and valued.”
Vargo encourages current club leaders facing this unexpected policy to see these circumstances as an opportunity for spiritual growth.
“God is too good to be unkind,” she said. “You might be upset or not understand why, but don’t let that get in the way of what the Lord can do.”
