Until the boycott’s announcement, progressive organizations and lawmakers such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had been the most vocal opponents of the DCCC’s new rule. The fact that the College Democrats—the party’s stalwart organizers and its future leaders, staffers, and reliable voters—have joined in the protest demonstrates that they, too, are worried the party is setting itself up for failure.

The DCCC unveiled the new standards in March, which require vendors hoping to do any work with the committee—political-consulting firms or campaign advertisers, for example—to sign on to a set of terms. The one the College Democrats oppose is an agreement for vendors not to contract with any primary candidate who is challenging an incumbent Democrat. Explaining her opposition to the rule, Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that “primaries are often the only way that underrepresented and working-class people are able to have a shot at pursuing elected office.” During a closed-door meeting with DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos on March 27, leaders of the House Progressive Caucus pressured her to reverse the new standards.

The controversy surrounding the vendor rule embodies one of the central debates currently roiling the party. According to the DCCC and other Democrats, the party’s core job is to protect its incumbents, even in safe blue districts: How can Democrats protect their House majority and win back the Senate, they wonder, if they’re spending time and resources mounting challenges to their fellow Democrats? But others in the party, many of them progressives, argue that the DCCC shouldn’t discourage primary opponents from challenging any Democrat—even the longest-serving incumbents. After all, what if such incumbents no longer represent the interests of their constituents?

The protesting College Democrats, whose views run the ideological gamut, argue that the DCCC’s new vendor rule shows that the party is ignoring its younger voices—their voices—in favor of maintaining the status quo. The policy, they say, will only serve to stymie the evolution of the Democratic Party, which is skewing younger, browner, and more female.

The DCCC might see the victories of outsider candidates in 2018, such as Ocasio-Cortez, as a reason to impose the vendor rule. She mounted the first primary campaign in more than a decade against Joseph Crowley, beating the powerful Queens-based congressman who was long considered a future speaker of the House. But the College Democrats argue that victories like hers are evidence that the party should be allowing, if not encouraging, primary challenges, especially in safe blue districts; clearly, they say, the district was ready for new representation. (That’s not to say that progressive candidates were responsible for the House majority; to the contrary, moderate candidates provided the most wins in the last midterm elections.)