An event was hosted in the Marano Campus Center auditorium Oct. 3, featuring young conservative activist Morgan Zegers, who was speaking on the topic of “Combatting the Rise of Socialism in America’s Youth.”

Tyler Toomey, one of the students running the event, said Zegers was invited to speak because “she’s someone that’s relatable to us and she really has a good message.”

At just 22 years old, Zegers is the founder of the group Young Americans Against Socialism which, according to their website, is a “nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to exposing socialism’s failures to young Americans by creating viral educational videos for social media.”

Zegers promoted these videos in her talk to students emphasizing that they have made over $40 million organic impressions on social media. 

The event featured some of these videos along with Zegers discussing the experiences of the people she has met through her organization, many of which came to the United States from socialist countries. 

“People who come from socialist countries hate socialism,” Zegers said. 

Zegers spoke on many controversial issues including student loans, environmental issues and the border. She appealed to those who disagree with her by admitting that student loan debt “is a crisis” and that “capitalism is not perfect.” However, she also added that the choices we make in government actions are between “socialism and common sense.”

Zegers criticized politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for promoting socialist ideas.

The International Socialist Organization, ISO, along with Lakers for Bernie were tabling outside of the event. 

“There was a lot of information brought up that I didn’t think had to do with the main idea of whether socialism is a good idea because it’s con-tangential to how socialism would actually be implemented,” ISO President Caleb Smith said. 

Zegers was very vocal about her views on climate change and quick to criticize politicians like Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez and activist Greta Thunberg who say that the world and people are dying and in 12 years our lives will drastically change. 

“People are not dying,” Zegers said.

ISO Vice President Max Mozes agreed with Zegers, saying she is correct that the world will not end in 12 years, however, “it’s the tipping point on the ability to go back which becomes significantly more difficult after 12 years.”

Mozes also criticized Zegers views on equality and said, “she made the claim that we are a completely equal county, which is in no way totally true. Mass incarceration is still a problem significantly targeted at minorities.”

Despite the criticisms from the officers of ISO, Toomey said he believes that the event went well. 

The event was originally promoted by the Young Americans for Freedom, YAF, a club on campus of which Toomey is listed as the president. 

However, when asked for his title Toomey refused, saying the event was “not an official YAF event with this, we’re a little under the radar with YAF.”

He said instead that the event was hosted by “conservative students on campus.”

The YAF club promoted the event on social media with a post that read, “The Young Americans for Freedom club will host guest speaker Morgan Zegers,” and handed out flyers which read, “anyone needing accommodations [for the event] should contact yaf@oswego.edu.” Campus Life confirmed the room used for the event was also reserved through YAF.

Toomey did state that the event was funded through outside donors, and that the students running the event were, “not SA funded at all for this.” 

The SA Supreme Court confirmed that the guest speaker event could be considered a co-sponsored event jointly funded by YAF and outside donors, which would be allowed under SA bylaws.

The student’s ability to find outside donors to support the event is just another example of how capitalism works, according to Toomey. 

“We’ve gone through the process before with SA in trying to get funding, for this event we did not do that. But in the past, we’ve gone through and aren’t allowed funding so we have to use our own means to do that,” he added.

Photo by Steven Novak | The Oswegonian