The College Republicans are worried partially about their Democratic peers on campus but also about other young people who call themselves Republican.
The more moderate among them say they fear far-right students' antics will corrupt the party. Their counterparts argue the party is too stodgy to capture the attention of undecided voters. In California and Washington, the groups fractured over who should lead them.
Underlying the college conservatives fears: that the Republican Party as a whole is in trouble.
For young Republicans, embracing a conservative identity while enrolled in college is a decision to be an outsider. Many of them say they feel ostracized on their campus for their beliefs, which fosters an us vs. them mentality.
That might partially explain why they host events such as affirmative action bake sales, in which they sell treats at different prices based on a persons race. These types of events are meant to rile college communities, and they often succeed. Students both broadcast their views against affirmative action and generate as much attention as they can.
At the University of Washington last May, a group calling itself College Republicans hosted such a bake sale. The campus conservatives found themselves the subject of national headlines, and the statewide organization of College Republicans denounced what the group did. The state organization instead recognized a different group the Husky College Republicans. The original group declined to speak to USA TODAY unless members were offered anonymity. Members said they feared for their safety.
Jack Pickett, the western vice chairman at the College Republican National Committee, was part of the College Republicans at the University of Washington and also led the statewide group. He was involved in the decision to start over.
The chapter, he said, crossed the line a couple of times, and the bake sale was the final straw. Pickett recalled he was not happy when leaders brought Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right speaker, to campus in 2017. Outside that event, a man protesting was shot by someone who had come to see Yiannopoulos.
Pickett considers himself a conservative but said he didnt initially support Donald Trump's campaign for president. (He now does.) He threw his support behind businesswoman and politician Carly Fiorina in 2016.
His critics have seized upon what he described as a more traditional type of conservatism, calling him a Republican in Name Only. People have attacked him online for his weight and claim he doesnt deserve his position. The old group of college leaders he helped to oust still meets.
Battling over the identity of a college group is vexing, Pickett said. It distracts from a larger, perhaps more difficult goal: recruiting new conservatives.
It's very difficult to do that when you have a group who's misusing your name and working almost intentionally, it often seems, to drive people away with their antics," Pickett said. "That's not something that anyone, even right-leaning students, want to be a part of. ... The split between conservative policy wonks and energized activists is one that Amy Binder, a sociologist at the University of California-San Diego, and Jeffrey Kidder, a sociologist at Northern Illinois University, have studied for years. They're writing a book on student activism.
They found individual students straddle those lines. They join the traditional College Republican groups because of the political connections they can build, but they might also join a group such as Turning Point USA. Founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012, when he was 18, the conservative group is known for its attention-grabbing tactics at colleges. It started the Professor Watchlist, a project meant to track, expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda. It hosts summits often attended by major figures in the Trump administration, including the president, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Kidder said such groups probably do a better job of appealing to students interested in more than traditional, campaigning-style politics.
Conservative and liberal students tend to organize differently, Binder said. Students on the left may feel more comfortable within the university. Many have student affairs offices directed toward minority students, such as black or LBGTQ cultural centers. Conservative students may be drawn off campus to groups such as Turning Point, which have a lot of money and resources to help them organize.
Joaquin Romero, 21, a junior studying economics at the University of New Mexico, chairs the New Mexico Federation of College Republicans. He has long been involved in state and city politics. In New Mexico, the state with the largest percentage of Hispanics in the country, Democrats hold all seats in Congress, the governor's office and both the state House and Senate.
Romero said his goal is to shift the college Republican group away from the incendiary approach some have taken. In 2017, the UNM group invited Yiannopoulos to campus, and police intervened to break up protests. Romero said he understands some people appreciate watching things burn, but he sees those efforts as counterproductive.
"Things like the Milo event, where you have someone on stage that says inflammatory things that are in my opinion not even conservative," he said, "it not only drives people away, but it also ignites the wrong kind of people."
The goal, Romero said, should be to recruit people who want to carry on the "conservatism of (Ronald) Reagan." That lasts longer, he argued, than the furor generated over provocative speakers.
Infighting among conservative students in California prompted a majority of the state's college Republicans to start a new organization altogether. They split off from the California College Republicans about a year ago to create the California Federation of College Republicans. That groups chairman, Matt Ronnau, also heads the chapter at University of California-Berkeley.
Initially, Ronnau said, the divide among College Republicans was between those eager to embrace President Trump and those who wanted to embrace a more traditional model of conservatism. The split came down to differences in how to run the organization. The new group, the federation, has 30 chapters and is recognized by the Colleg