OREM, Utah — The campus where Charlie Kirk was shot dead one year ago today closed its doors on Thursday morning. Utah Valley University canceled classes on the anniversary of the shooting, telling students and staff it wanted to create time for reflection. What that reflection looks like at the UCCU Center tonight depends on who in Orem you ask.
Turning Point USA is holding a memorial event there at 6:30 p.m., with Glenn Beck and other conservative speakers invited to mark the anniversary. Outside, students affiliated with the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the Community Defense Club of UVU, and a group called the Black Menaces have said they plan to protest. The same gathering that TPUSA describes as “Freedom Built to Last” is, to them, something else.
Kirk was 31 when a single rooftop shot ended his rally at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. He had come to Orem to kick off what he called his American Comeback Tour, a conservative campus speaking circuit organized through Turning Point USA, the organization he founded and led. Tyler Robinson was identified and arrested within roughly 33 hours after federal investigators released identifying photographs to the public. He has been held since.
On September 1, Utah 4th District Judge Tony Graf ruled that Robinson would stand trial on all seven counts prosecutors had filed against him. The counts include aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, two counts of witness tampering, two counts of obstruction of justice, and a violent offense committed in the presence of a child. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty. Robinson pleaded not guilty after the ruling and is due back in court in October. A trial date has not been set.
Robinson’s defense had filed written arguments before the September 1 hearing, challenging the evidentiary basis of the probable cause case assembled by prosecutors. Judge Graf found that standard met on each of the seven counts and bound Robinson over for trial on all of them.
The path to Robinson’s arrest involved an early complication. A false confessor briefly diverted the investigation in the days after the shooting before the photographs led investigators to Robinson. The man who falsely confessed was later charged with obstruction and a child exploitation offense and sentenced to 15 years in prison in January 2026.
Robinson has not publicly explained a motive. Prosecutors have not released details about what they believe drove the killing. NBC News reported that the judge’s ruling on the probable cause standard did not include any discussion of motive, which will be a central question at trial.
Some students and campus organizations at UVU have viewed the return differently. The Black Menaces, the Community Defense Club of UVU, and the campus SDS chapter have each announced their intent to demonstrate outside the UCCU Center during the event. Kirk’s assassination and the response that followed left the university in an unusual position: the site of a nationally significant killing with a student body that does not uniformly share the politics of the man who died there.
NPR reported that Robinson’s not guilty plea, entered after the September 1 ruling, set in motion a pretrial process whose timeline remains unclear. The October court date is expected to address scheduling, but the actual trial is unlikely to begin before 2027.
What the trial will establish, including why Robinson did what prosecutors say he did and what legal standard will govern the death penalty charge, is not yet known. A year after the shooting that ended Kirk’s career and upended the organization he built, the university that bore the event has cleared its calendar for the day. The memorial will fill one end of it. The protest is expected to fill another.
