Whitman College's student senate voted 25-0 to block a Republican club from campus this week.
Before that vote, senators grilled club members for an hour about Donald Trump and the Republican platform.
Then one senator told the students exactly what they needed to become to get approved.
Senate Grills Whitman Republicans on Trump Platform Before Unanimous Vote
David Dunbabin walked into his student senate hearing expecting a routine club approval process.
He walked out an hour later after being asked to answer for Donald Trump's positions on immigration.
Senators peppered the Whitman Republican Club's leadership with questions that had nothing to do with paperwork or bylaws.
One senator demanded the group respond to "subsection 18" of the 2024 Republican Party platform and asked if members would call out the GOP for it.
Another senator pressed the club's international board members on President Trump's immigration record, asking what their "plan" was if the club never got affiliated.
Then came the line that ended any pretense this was about organizational qualifications.
A senator told the club to scrub its title and "make a debate club," according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The Associated Students of Whitman College Senate then voted 25-0 to deny the Republican club official recognition.
Club Chair Says Members Were Doxxed and Spat On After Rejection
"Three minutes beforehand they decided practically to reject us without even thought," Dunbabin said, according to Seattle Red.
He called the hearing "a 60-minute long" ordeal and said senators treated his club like it was "causing harm."
Dunbabin laid out what happened next in an interview on The Jason Rantz Show.
His dorm room location was posted online after the vote went public, he said.
He said someone spat on his window multiple times after he hung an Israeli flag.
Dunbabin said students called him a fascist and a Nazi for chairing a Republican club at a school that markets itself as open-minded.
Roughly half his board members are immigrants, and Dunbabin believes they took worse abuse than he did.
One board member was surrounded by a crowd of students who blocked her from leaving, Dunbabin said.
Whitman College has neither disputed nor confirmed any of it publicly.
Whitman's Climate Justice Coalition and Planned Parenthood Generation Action both remain officially recognized campus clubs.
FIRE Gives Whitman a Deadline to Reverse Its Republican Ban
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called the vote "blatant viewpoint discrimination" and gave Whitman until September 14 to respond and reverse it.
Whitman is a private college, so the First Amendment doesn't force the school's hand the way it would at a public university.
But Whitman's own student handbook promises free expression and free association to every student who enrolls there, and FIRE says that promise just got broken by 25 senators in one room.
This isn't an isolated Whitman problem – it's a playbook.
St. John's University in New York denied a Turning Point USA chapter twice, most recently in November 2025.
Loyola University New Orleans rejected a Turning Point USA chapter twice in a single semester.
California Lutheran University and Point Loma Nazarene University both blocked Turning Point USA chapters that same year.
That surge in student demand came after Charlie Kirk's assassination, when Turning Point USA fielded more than 120,000 requests from students who wanted to start new campus chapters.
Whitman's senators didn't ask the Republican club about its budget, its meeting schedule, or its membership numbers.
They asked whether the club would denounce Trump, and when the answer wasn't good enough, they voted it off campus.
"It is the least place in the world where you're going to find opposing points of view," KIRO Newsradio host Jake Skorheim said of Whitman's reputation for open debate.
That's a student government telling conservative kids exactly where they stand on a campus that sells itself on tolerance.
Sources:
- Margaret Flavin, "Student Senate at Whitman College Unanimously Rejects Republican Club," The Gateway Pundit, September 8, 2026.
- Brynn Lintner, "Whitman Republican Club Denied Affiliation – for Being Republican," The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, September 4, 2026.
- Peter D'Abrosca, "St. John's University Student Government Denies Turning Point Chapter Official Club Status for Second Time," Fox News, January 28, 2026.
- Seattle Red Staff, "He Was Asked to Start a Republican Club by Whitman's President, Then His Window Was Spit On and His Room Was Doxxed," Seattle Red, September 3, 2026.
- Jake Skorheim and Spike O'Neill, "'All Points of Our View Are Welcome': Jake, Spike Call Out Whitman College After Student Senate Unanimously Blocks Republican Club," MyNorthwest.com, September 5, 2026.