The AU College Republicans made headlines as the first College Republicans club in the state of Ohio to publicly “disavow” Donald Trump.

“Last semester we made an amendment to [our] constitution, and the club voted [on it],” the club’s public relations manager Joey Barretta said. “Because normally we would have to automatically approve of the Republican nominee and do campaigning [for them]. So we passed a disavowal so we could choose whether or not we wanted to support the republican presidential nominee, or any candidate.” 

When Trump officially became the nominee, the group voted not to support him and not campaign for him. 

“It’s not so much a negative action as something we just didn’t want to be involved in,” explained Barretta. “And we’re still going to focus on all our other races that we normally do.”

The decision to disavow Trump comes from the group’s feeling that Donald Trump does not represent the same conservative ideals that the group holds. 

The club also went to Facebook to voice their opinions and reasonings for disavowing Trump as their candidate.

“Last semester, during the primary season, our club voted to disavow Mr. Trump’s candidacy because we believed that he did not represent the conservative values that we believe in. Several months later, Mr. Trump has still not done anything to convince us we were wrong in our first judgement.”

According to Barretta, the group holds Trump to be more of a political opportunist who plays on discontent of the public rather than actually making a principled case as to why he should be president.

The group will still continue to support candidates who they believe will represent their political ideals. But in the presidential election, where they feel none of the candidates are ideal, they are choosing to stay neutral. 

“We are not confident with Trump’s stance on anything,” the club’s political director Josh Frey said. “He was pro-choice before running for president and now he’s pro-life. He was pro-gun control until he wanted to be president and now he’s pro-second amendment. He was pro-deportation for a long time and then he wasn’t and now he is again. So if we work to elect Donald Trump, we are working to elect a wild card, and so that doesn’t really seem like a good use of our time.”

The group wanted to make their views public prior to the activities fair so that incoming students would know the stance of the club ahead of time. 

“We think that a year from now, two years from now people from the Republican party would look back on Trump’s nomination as a big mistake, one of the biggest mistakes the party has ever made,” Frey said. “It will be good for the club to be able to show that at the time we were still standing for conservative principles while the rest of the party was working to elect a candidate who was really doomed to failure.”

College Republicans meets on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. in the Ashbrook Center.