U. Maryland Charges Turning Point USA Security Fee for Event

U. Maryland Charges Turning Point USA Security Fee for Event

It’s ridiculous but it’s also reality. I think any conservative group meeting on a college campus should have their own, very heavy, security.

The College Fix reports:

University of Maryland stands by security fees for Turning Point USA event

The University of Maryland does not plan to change its events policies that allow it to charge security fees for events, despite pushback from a national free speech group.

The public university in College Park charged the campus Turning Point USA group nearly $150 for a security contractor to check bags during an event with Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. The university charged the group for four hours of work, although the event only lasted an hour.

In response, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression raised concerns to the school.

However, the university stood by its policies, although a representative for FIRE said Turning Point is being treated unfairly.

“Generally speaking, universities may set security fees for event hosts, provided that these fees are based on reasonable, content- and viewpoint-neutral criteria,” Charlotte Arneson, FIRE’s campus rights advocacy program officer, told The Fix via email.

While university policies allow it to charge for the security fee, she said the school “also has an unwritten exception for events held in certain designated outdoor spaces, where UMD will absorb all security costs instead of the event hosts.”

Arneson also told The Fix that FIRE has since requested “that UMD amend its event policy to clarify how its event security fees are determined and when student groups are required to cover these fees.”

The University of Maryland has not responded to multiple media inquiries from The Fix asking for updates on this issue in the past month, including two emails and a phone message.

However, the school previously explained its policy in an Oct. 2025 letter to FIRE, soon after the actual event.

The requirements are “entirely reasonable in light of the objective assessment of the referenced event and the security risks associated with it,” Associate General Counsel Christopher Lord wrote in a response letter.

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