One-Year Kirk Memorial Is Tonight at UVU; Campus Closed, SDS Plans Counter-Protest

Utah Valley University is closed for classes today, one year after Charlie Kirk was shot on that campus. Turning Point USA will hold a private memorial, “Freedom Built to Last,” at the UCCU Center at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Time. Doors open at 4 p.m. The arena is a short walk from the courtyard where Kirk was killed Sept. 10, 2025, during a Q&A on the first stop of his campus tour. Admission requires an AXS ticket and is first-come up to capacity. The program streams on YouTube, X, Facebook, and Rumble. Listed speakers are Glenn Beck, Christian apologist Frank Turek, TPUSA Chief Field Officer Andrew Sypher, and Caleb Chilcutt, the former UVU chapter chair who was nearby when Kirk was hit. Turek was standing a few feet from the stage. Heavy screening and metal detectors are planned.

Interim President Wayne Vaught told students in August that campus operations would shut down Sept. 10 for “reflection, service and connection,” with a United Way Day of Caring breakfast in Provo. UVU later said the UCCU Center would stay open for TPUSA’s private event and that the university had not endorsed Kirk’s politics by renting the hall. The New York Times, reporting from Orem this morning, described a split campus: some students calling Kirk a martyr for free speech, others saying they wanted the school to move on and objecting to a full-day closure for a partisan memorial. UVU enrolls about 48,000. A committee is still weighing a permanent campus tribute. The grass where Kirk fell has been paved; a flagpole stands nearby.

Students for a Democratic Society at UVU, joined in online notices by the campus Community Defense Club, the national SDS chapter, and a group calling itself the Black Menaces, announced a demonstration against the memorial, the administration, and Utah County commissioners. Their posts said closing campus and hosting TPUSA amounted to an endorsement and that they would “not stand for this.” SDS members held a de-escalation training this week and made signs including “no Kirk on campus.” Organizer Collin Grannis told KUTV the point was to protest without fear. Other campus reporting quoted SDS language about making attendance “as uncomfortable as possible.” The memorial itself is ticketed and inside the arena; the protest is planned outside.

The same date produced mockery on other campuses that has not been confirmed as official events. A Fizz post requiring a Georgetown email advertised a “Charlie Kirk lookalike contest” on Copley Lawn with the line “speak the truth while the cost is high” and drew more than 2,200 upvotes. Related posts floated an Erika Kirk lookalike contest and “Happy Kirkiversary.” Georgetown’s TPUSA chapter treated the slogan as mockery. A university spokesman said Georgetown is not planning such an event, knows of no student organization hosting one, condemned the language, and is monitoring safety. Similar anonymous posts circulated at the University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee. Online, some users have used “Kirkversary” to mark the killing as a celebration; Deseret News documented streamers treating the anniversary as a party. On CNBC, host Joe Kernen told Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who was promoting a book on polarization, that tattoo artists were advertising neck tattoos at the wound site and that people were “overtly still celebrating” the assassination. Kernen said he did not want anything to do with those people and that what he saw was “mostly coming from one side.” Cox did not dispute the examples.

In Dallas, the GOP midterm convention’s second night lists a Kirk remembrance on the same calendar as the UVU service. Erika Kirk, who now runs TPUSA, sat in the American Airlines Center audience Wednesday and was not on the Night One speaker list. Tyler Robinson, charged in the killing, has been bound over for a death-eligible trial; that case is separate from tonight’s memorial. The UCCU Center program has not started. What happens at the doors, on the protest line, and on the livestream will be the rest of the day’s record.