After a period of dormancy, the Moravian Republican Society has been officially reestablished.
In Sept. 2025, the United Student Government (USG) voted to approve the revival of the organization. During a closed session, the proposal was carried through with a lone USG member dissenting.
Grace Tirabassi ‘25, who was president of the Moravian Republican Society during the 2025 fall semester, reestablished the organization in order to modify the image of Republican students and to collaborate with local non-profit organizations. “This club is all about breaking the stigma against Republican students and showing up to support the community,” she said.
The Society recently held a drive for Veterans Day. The organization collected winter hats, gloves, umbrellas, and thermal shirts in the Haupert Union Building (HUB) between Nov. 24 and Dec. 4, 2025, to help homeless veterans at the Victory House of Lehigh Valley.
Dan O’Connor, a professor of practice in accounting at Moravian University who considers himself ideologically moderate, welcomes the revival of the Moravian Republican Society. “I hope that others would view the club as an organization that values productive discussions about society’s challenges while respecting differing views on the best solutions to help society,” he said.
Mark Koscinski, also an accounting professor of practice and a self-proclaimed conservative Republican, agreed.
“Hopefully, with an open view towards a healthy debate. I believe that an open exchange of ideas helps make better decisions,” he said. “Many scholars have supported this view, including Cass Sunstein, a prominent scholar who worked in the Obama administration.”
At this point, membership in the organization is open to conservative students only. “I asked my members about this,” said Tirabassi. “They did say that, if more [ideologically diverse] students started to come, then they would feel as if they needed to hide their feelings.”
This particular sentiment is not a new testament to American political discourse. Conservative students in higher education often believe there are “distinctive challenges” to political self-expression, leading them to conceal their ideological beliefs to avoid deteriorating friendships or academic repercussions from their professors, according to a study by the University of North Carolina.
Tirabassi mentioned that she often pretended to be someone she isn’t sometimes when drafting papers and completing assignments for the political science department. She believes that most of her professors were on the left of the political spectrum, and she thus felt the need to mask her political identity when approaching class assignments and discussions. “I think I [had] to purposefully be on the professor’s side to get an A,” she said. “I think that gets you across Moravian in general.”
Tirabassi asserts that Republicans are not fully accepted on Moravian’s campus. She talked about her previous roommates, whom she had lived with before the 2024 presidential election. Tirabassi said that after she returned to her residence hall after shopping for groceries, two of her roommates allegedly called her a horrible person for voting for President Trump.
Tirabassi said that she could have filed a Title IX violation for her roommates’ alleged verbal abuse, but decided not to. Instead, she decided to launch a campus-wide effort to revive the Moravian Republican Society.
It wasn’t until the sudden death of the American paleoconservative activist, Charlie Kirk, that Tirabassi recognized that her intuition to re-establish a politically partisan affinity club would not be solely an active force of resistance against the institutional status quo of Moravian’s campus politics but “a continuation of Charlie Kirk’s legacy,” she said.
Tirabassi consulted with alumni to formulate ideas and plan activities for the organization.
One alum suggested that the Moravian Republican Society establish a chapter of Turning Point USA, an ultra-conservative nonprofit organization founded by Kirk to restore reactionary politics in what he perceived to be a liberal political climate. The organization has its origins in 2012, when Kirk first began making a presence on college campuses to debate college students on the premise that college is a scam. Over time, Kirk’s non-profit organization expanded financially and enabled conservative students to establish chapters to mobilize the conservative movement on their campuses.
During the Society meeting last year, Tirabassi proposed establishing a Turning Point USA Chapter as a subsidiary of the Moravian Republican Society. However, Tirabassi received mixed reactions from the club’s general membership body. Macks Gillette ‘29, who replaced Tirabissi as president of the Society, said he intends to follow through on her efforts to establish a Turning Point USA Chapter on campus.
Sophia Eaton, assistant director of finance at Moravian, says the revival of the Society has the support of some Moravian trustees, who have donated a total of $1,550 to the effort. Due to the university’s transition to a new financial management application source, Oracle, the Society has not yet received the donated funds.
Eaton declined to name the donors out of respect for the confidentiality of the donors’ personal information. It is unclear whether the university trustees have donated to other student-led organizations in previous years.
Moravian students’ reactions to the reestablishment of the Society are mixed and politically charged.
Audrey Perrin ‘29, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist from New York City, said, “Creating a safe space is fine. I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable with a lot of Republican representation.”
Jessica Heydt ‘28, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat from Palmerton Borough, Pennsylvania, is more concerned. “I find [the reestablishment of the Society] inappropriate; there are people who feel unsafe, and this reestablishment is not helpful,” she said. “The things that Turning Point USA stands for make many individuals feel unheard, unsafe, and overlooked—It feels threatening to this campus.”
The Moravian Republican Society meets every Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in Comenius Hall, room 101. Students can learn more about the Moravian Republican Society by following the organization on Instagram: @moravianrepublicans. For inquiries about club meetings, contact the organization at [email protected].
Addendum. Moravian’s Political Science Department responds to Tirabissi’s assertion about the department:
The characterization of the political science department in the Comenian article was inaccurate and unfair. Faculty in the political science department do not have ideological purity tests that determine student success in their classes. We recognize that our students come from different backgrounds and have different worldviews. We want them to bring those to our class discussions. We create an environment in which all our students feel comfortable to share their views. However, we do challenge our students to engage with assigned readings and to ground their assertions in evidence and facts. We encourage students to expect that their assumptions may be challenged and their worldviews expanded. Faculty in the political science department also come from different backgrounds. We belong to multiple subfields of political science, we speak multiple languages and come from multiple countries of origin. We are teachers, researchers, and practitioners.
Many students make the mistake of equating political science to the kind of political punditry that they see on Cable news or on online videos. That is not what we do in political science. We study political institutions, processes, thought, and power, using a variety of disciplinary theories and methods (based on our subfields) with a view to analyzing, explaining, and understanding the world. By doing so we equip students not only with the tools for political analysis but also for their role as citizens in a democratic society, and for informed membership in a global community.
Finally, our students do not usually disclose their political affiliation, nor do our faculty. However we have mentored several very successful conservative students who disclosed their political affiliation, including a former president of the College Republicans before the club became dormant for a while.
