By Guy Page

The Spaulding High School freshman president of the Barre school’s fledgling Turning Point USA chapter has connected with 20-30 students who want to join, he said on the Barre Beat podcast that aired Tuesday, September 30.

Vermont Daily Chronicle readers were introduced to Seth Fewer, age 15, when he and chapter vice-president, friend and fellow freshman Javion Kastner were interviewed by VDC and Planet Hank at the Americans for Prosperity legislative forum in Barre on September 18, just eight days after TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Fewer told Barre Beat host Rep. Michael Boutin this week what he told VDC and Planet Hank on the 18th: he’s been working on building a chapter since June. He told Boutin he’s making progress on the last major piece before formally opening the chapter: finding a Spaulding teacher willing to become the club sponsor. He told Boutin there may be an announcement soon on that front. 

Long before Kirk’s assassination thrust TPUSA into the headlines, Fewer was busy recruiting students. At the Barre Heritage Festival, he set up a TPUSA table and sat there all day, talking to students and signing them up on a contact sheet. “I think we signed up about 20, thirty people who wanted to come to the meetings,” he said. 

His willingness to get organized and ‘put himself out there’ drew praise from Barre Beat co-host and 802 Scoop studio owner Raylene Meunier. “It shows your passion that you were willing to come down here at 15 years old, set up a table, and sit there all day. That’s a lot for a kid your age,” she said. “It shows you are willing to do whatever it takes to get things going.”

“I know they say there’s been a lot of new chapters recently, since recent events,” Fewer told Boutin. “But I’ve definitely been into this way before that. It’s really important to me.”

“I’ve always wanted to be more into politics myself,” Fewer said. “A good way to do that is to get into a community obviously, where you can build and grow with everybody, and once you have established that you can build and grow more.”

Fewer attended the memorial service for Kirk in Arizona. “It was very nice, there were a lot of good speakers there,” he said, adding: 

“It was really hot down there. They call it a dry heat, but I don’t know about that.”

Boutin, a school board member, said he wanted to dispel the rumor that there’s been any pushback from the school administration. Fewer agreed. “They’ve been very nice about it so far.”

If TPUSA takes off in Barre and the other seven schools reportedly in the early stages of development, it can’t come too soon for older Vermonters who have been voting conservative all their lives, almost always in the minority. Voters like VDC commentator Bob Bennett of Shelburne, who bemoaned that his vote seems to land with a ‘clunk’ in the voting box: 

“I might as well have stayed in bed, because it has no chance against the ballots that start with a “D.” It’s overwhelmed. It has been for years. Will it always be like that?

“Maybe not.

“High school and college students throughout Vermont can make my vote count. Okay, they are not old enough to vote. But they are old enough to know a good thing when they see it and, in a few years, they will be dropping their ballots in the box.

“They have joined the “Turning Point.” They are all over it. It’s a phenomenon. It’s a bandwagon. It looks unstoppable. And as Isaiah told us, “A little child shall lead them.”  

“Big kids too.

“While the Turning Point balloons and blossoms in every county in the state, in just a few years, if I am still around, I wait to hear my ballot land without a clunk.”