By Kelsey Ables and Katie Tarrant
It was not long after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on Sept. 10 that pitches for monuments to the 31-year-old conservative activist began to surface.
A day after his death, more than a dozen House Republicans circulated a letter calling for a statue of the influencer and organizer at the U.S. Capitol. Within a week, Oklahoma lawmakers introduced legislation requiring every state university campus to put up a Kirk statue in a dedicated square or plaza, and Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline (R) called for similar legislation for all public campuses in his state.
New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution that has recently undergone a conservative overhaul, went a step further, announcing it was commissioning a Kirk statue and sharing an AI rendering of how it might look. The school told The Washington Post it has had an “outpouring of artists who are willing to work with us about the monument” but did not provide names.

The push for such monuments, particularly at college campuses, is unusual, experts say. Many figures given statues in the U.S. have been deceased for decades, and some experts and former students were skeptical that these statues, which can take years to make and cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, will actually come to be.
The effort, however, reflects how Kirk — a star among young conservatives but also divisive for his controversial rhetoric on race, sexuality and other issues — has been hailed by the right as a kind of martyr. With many political leaders at his memorial service invoking the language of religious and political warfare, his death has become a rallying cry for a movement set on portraying itself as defenders of Western, Christian values that they say are under attack. In this polarized political environment, the statue proposals have revived a contemporary debate on who is commemorated.


(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5784572&forum_id=2Ã#49335905)