Education · Salt Lake City, UT Metro · September 16, 2026
Utah Democrats Seek Expulsion of College Republicans Over Kirk Cake Photo
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The dispute has moved off the argument and onto named individuals. Two College Republicans — the chapter vice president who posted the photo and a second member — are the named respondents in a report to the Dean of Students, while the student with the cake was herself identified to a national audience (the Salt Lake Tribune reports Rudy Giuliani and others publicized her identity) and, per KUTV, both women have since reported death threats. Each side now has one frozen, personalized target rather than a contested question about campus speech.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse the isolation on both ends this month: if you know the accused students, go with them — attend, help assemble the paper record, and say publicly and by name that they are not standing alone. Equally, decline to forward the identifying posts about the student who apologized; she is the other half of the same mechanism. Write to the Dean of Students about the standard being applied, not about any student's character.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The complaint is an attempt to turn the university's own rulebook into the weapon: the report is framed under the student behavior standards in Policy 6-400, which forbid "threatening, endangering, or damaging the health or safety" of a community member, including electronically. The same Policy 6-400 contains a Freedom of Expression section saying students may not be sanctioned for constitutionally protected expression — so the code cuts both ways, and whichever side has actually kept to it wins. Notably, the Daily Utah Chronicle reports College Republicans responded by resurfacing a College Democrat's past comments, which narrows the gap between accuser and accused.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Read Policy 6-400 yourself — the whole thing, both the behavior standards and the expression and due-process sections — before quoting it. Then hold your own side to it: a chapter that answers a doxxing accusation by digging up an opponent's old posts has handed away the principle it needs. Decide in writing, as a club or a church group, that you will name conduct and not identities, and keep the receipt of every apology you accept.
Rule 9
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
The word doing the work in this story is "expulsion." Per the university's published procedure, what has actually happened is that a report was filed and reviewed; a Hearing is required only where suspension or dismissal is possible, notice must come at least seven days out, and the respondent is told in writing of the right to an advisor who may be an attorney. The university has said only that it is reviewing the circumstances — the terrifying part is the announced possibility, not yet any finding.
Counter-Rule 9 · Courageous Realism
Name the worst case out loud and cost it honestly. Fear of the unnamed is doing most of the work.
Cost the worst case out loud: read Procedure P6-400a and the Dean of Students' misconduct-process page, write down the actual sanction range, the notice period, and the appeal route, and carry that page to any meeting. Ask the office in writing which section is charged and whether the matter is on the Hearing track or the informal track. Then stop repeating "expulsion" as a settled fact until a document says so.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.