The quality of education that students receive at public schools and colleges is becoming a serious concern, even when looking only in the United States. Could the quality of education be more important than access to it? The answer seems to be a resounding “yes.”
Schools are supposed to be places of intellectual inquisitiveness, not places where one opinion goes unchallenged and becomes a source of tyranny against truth. A quality education challenges students to think deeply to discover fresh, healthy perspectives and equips them to defend their arguments civilly. When students and even teachers do not want to rationally debate opposing worldviews, it fires off a warning that education is now a dime a dozen, but quality education is indeed a rarity. How strong is the impact of such incidents?
In March 2026 alone:
1. The women's basketball team from Howard University in Washington, D.C., absolutely would not stand for the national anthem. The university, as of late, made a mandate requiring student-athletes at Howard to stand during the anthem and give "The Star-Spangled Banner" its deserved respect. The basketball players responded to the mandate by intentionally hiding in the women's locker room during live performances of the national anthem that open games "rather than comply."
When the conservative publication Campus Reform interviewed the players, they insisted that they were "courageous" to mock "The Star-Spangled Banner."
However, "The Star-Spangled Banner" helps us Americans learn the value of our nation's founding and how the Founders had to struggle to become independent from Britain. They almost died for us to gain independence. The anthem reminds listeners that freedom is not free. In light of this fact and America's 250th anniversary, the basketball players merely showed stubbornness instead of actual courage.
2. A flyer for a Turning Point USA speaking event at UC San Diego was vandalized and covered in stickers, assuming that Charlie Kirk's assassination was his own fault. Further, the stickers deliberately obscured what time and in what room the event was taking place.
Reflecting on the gravity of the situation, this new vandalism incident has eerie similarities to two 2023 incidents: one in which a student at Hunter College in Manhattan chewed and punctured fetus models from her peers’ pro-life display, and the other showing Stanford students burning Matt Walsh flyers to prevent peers from knowing Walsh would have a speaking event there.
The new incident combines elements of both 2023 vandalism accounts and points out that some students could have had these incidents as precedents for many years to remain comfortable refusing to engage with unfamiliar ideas.
Students from colleges across America are facing the problem head-on by inviting like-minded speakers to campus events and sharing their beliefs with their peers; however, they noticeably choose to use welcoming words instead of attempting to force conversion by the sword. These students, from organizations such as Young America's Foundation, have hosted events with conservative values, such as “No More Che Day." The "No More Che Day" event, to name one, was exposing truths about Che Guevara being a murderer. This counters university teaching that Guevara was a well-intentioned man who did constructive things for the world, and that the anniversary of his death should be considered a commemorative day.
Students For Life, Young America's Foundation, Turning Point USA, and similar student organizations have always hosted other conservative events on a wide range of topics, such as pro-life and free speech. They are interested in students seeing differing sides to the story and guiding themselves with the maxim that "the pen is mightier than the sword."
There are people who understand how important a quality education is, and they fight proudly for all students to have it.
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