Petition against him called a mainstream conservative group ‘extremist’
An executive with a fraternity has resigned from his position on the advisory council of a conservative student group after criticism from some alumni.
Andrew Borans (right), the chief executive officer of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Foundation, resigned from the advisory council of TPUSA recently.
Some alumni of the Jewish fraternity criticized Borans for his involvement with TPUSA. Turning Point USA Action, the political advocacy arm of the free-market student group, sent busloads of students to the “Save America March” on January 6. A group of people stormed the Capitol building later that day, leaving five people dead.
The alumni wanted Borans to either resign from AEPI or resign from the advisory council of the free-market student group.
“I served on the Turning Point advisory board in order to help them work with their students to make campuses safer for Jewish students,” Borans said via an email from a spokesperson to The College Fix. “I did not participate in the rally that day in DC and I have loudly condemned the violence at the Capitol on January 6.”
Borans has no affiliation with Turning Point Action. There is no evidence that any Turning Point activists were involved in the siege itself. Turning Point Action has previously said that its activists boarded buses and left after the rally’s speeches ended.
“I have resigned from TPUSA because my involvement with them has become a distraction from the good and important things that Alpha Epsilon Pi is doing,” Borans wrote in an email to The Fix.
“I was never involved in any day to day activities or even knew about them,” Borans wrote on a Facebook post on January 21.
The petition accused Borans of using his influence in AEPI to further the efforts of Turning Point.
“We are outraged that Andrew Borans, Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Epsilon Pi Foundation and the face of our brotherhood for the past three decades, also is a member of the Advisory Council of Turning Point USA, the extremist group headed by Charlie Kirk,” the January 18 open letter, addressed to AEPI leadership, said.
The petition accused Charlie Kirk, the CEO of TPUSA, of “undermining democracy” when he “used TPUSA’s political action committee to organize a caravan of buses to join the rally that culminated in the assault on the U.S. Capitol and the murder of one police officer and the beating of dozens of others.”
The alumni said that the free-market student group’s mention of Borans’ involvement with AEPI on its website “suggests that TPUSA believes that Borans’ affiliation with AEPi is the most important fact about him.”
The Fix reached out to Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer who had shared the petition, to ask for comment. The Fix asked him if he knew if AEPI had any rules about its members volunteering to advise other organizations, especially political groups. The Fix also asked if he believed AEPI should ban staff from advising liberal groups too. Rosenstein did not respond to two emailed requests for comment in the past two weeks.
Proud of @aepi alumni for coming together and doing a good thing. https://t.co/OX9acaG4H1
— Joshua Rosenstein (@jirosenstein) January 21, 2021
The Fix also asked Terry Hugo, a spokesperson for AEPI, if the fraternity had any rules about its staff working with political organizations. Hugo did not respond in the past two weeks.
The Fix reached in the past two weeks to two media representatives for Turning Point USA, Andrew Kolvet and Olivia Raiff, but did not receive a response to emailed requests about how long Borans had served on the advisory council and his role in supporting the group.
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