Are You Willing to Take a Stand for Your Values?

            I chose to make Taylor University freshman David Muselman my VIP for this week because he stood tall when confronted with opposition. The Christian college in Upland, Indiana, invited Vice President Mike Pence to deliver the May 2019 commencement address at the school. A few progressive students were not pleased, and they tried to cancel the invitation.


            Muselman countered the progressives with his “I Like Mike” campaign. When he was asked why he decided to support the vice president, Muselman explained as follows. 

… That’s a great question. But first and foremost, the day our president of the university announced Vice President Pence would be speaking at commencement, everybody was thrilled. I got text messages, I got phone calls, and everybody could not believe that the vice president would be coming to speak at our university in the middle of corn fields. It’s in Upland, Indiana, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s an honor to have the vice president. So that was first and foremost, everybody was thrilled.

A day or two later, the very loud, outspoken minority on the campus freaked out a little bit. There was a girl who said she was actually shaking in fear, and there was another girl who said she was terrified at the fact that Mike Pence was coming to speak on our campus.

Then after those two instances, the … fake media took ahold of the story….

So that’s from the outside looking in, that’s what everybody thought. Everybody thought Taylor was a place that did not want the vice president to come. From the inside looking out, that wasn’t the case at all. It was a loud, loud, loud minority of students who were not in favor, and in fact, a tone of people on campus really, really were excited for it.

So then that launched me into the idea of making these T-shirts. I made these T-shirts, they’re called “I Like Mike T-shirts.”

They had the vice president’s face in the middle of them, and it was so cool….

            The idea for the T-shirts came from a friend, but Muselman designed them and went door to door selling the shirts. The sales were slow at first until a small group of people purchased the shirts and started to wear them around campus. Then lots of other people wanted to buy them – maintenance man, technicians, faculty, and alumni as well as students.


            Pence rewarded Muselman and his group for their support when he met with them personally. What does one say to the Vice President of the United States? 

We talked a lot, we talked about a lot of stuff. He mainly talked about how thankful he was for the support and for us backing him, and we just told him how thankful we were because, really, a lot of us listening to the show even, we believe in those basic, biblically sound conservative values. But sometimes we’re not willing to stand up for those values, and Vice President Pence is an unbelievable example for standing up for those values. But then as well, is not just standing up, being willing to take the heat. Obviously, he’s taken a lot of heat in the past few years, but that’s just the man he is. He’s an unbelievable man.