New College of Florida one year later: A tumultuous transition for liberal arts school
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As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed the state Legislature on its opening day of the 2024 session, he paused to point out a college baseball player in the Senate chambers' upper viewing gallery.
It was J.T. Leanos, a freshman outfielder on the first-year baseball team at New College, the smallest school in the state’s public university system, which doesn't have its own baseball stadium or athletic facilities, yet fields a larger roster of baseball players than premier programs such as the University of Florida or Florida State University.
The governor didn’t mention Leanos' athletic prowess, instead congratulating New College President Richard Corcoran on the transformation of the school that he has led over the past year.
“New College is well on its way to being the premier classical public liberal arts college in America,” he said. “The reforms instituted by the New College Board of Trustees and by President Richard Corcoran have transformed the college from an outpost of ideological indoctrination into an institution rooted in truth.”
Today, New College barely resembles the quiet, quaint bayfront liberal arts school known for its unconventional grading system and large LGBTQ+ population for much of the past 60 years.
In the 12 months leading up to DeSantis’ address on Jan. 9, Sarasota’s New College saw a drastic overhaul launched by the appointment of six new conservative trustees to the college’s board. The appointees included a dean from the conservative Christian Hillsdale College and one of the nation's leading anti-diversity activists.
With the backing of the new board, Corcoran's administration implemented changes at a breakneck pace. In its first meeting last January, the board moved to fire the college’s president, Patricia Okker, and installed Corcoran as her replacement.
The college swiftly eliminated its Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence in a statement against diversity initiatives, removed the school's Women and Gender Studies program, denied tenure to several professors who were on track to receive it and established an unprecedented athletics department to boost enrollment.
The Florida Legislature and DeSantis also poured money into the school at unheard-of levels, and is set to approve $10 million in additional funding this year, with at least $5 million earmarked for more scholarships.
Decisions by the board have driven many students to leave the school, while others remain behind, some of them voicing their displeasure with the changes.
Quick change
Since he was appointed interim president in February 2023, Corcoran has emphasized enrollment increases and established an athletics department that increased first-year enrollment to a record figure. However, increased enrollment came with a decrease in overall grade point average and test scores, which had historically helped the school earn a national reputation as a top public liberal arts college.
Scores of students left the school following the changes.
Marshall Bustamante, a 21-year-old fourth-year philosophy student at New College, said he thought about transferring to Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where dozens of other former New College students had transferred, but instead stayed to try to maintain what made New College's student body unique. Even so, the campus now feels divided between the athletes and the regular students — both physically and socially, he said.
Athletes also make up about a third of new students according to admissions data from the Fall 2023 class. The college has maintained that it is standard for most larger liberal arts colleges to have a third of its student body be athletes.
"It feels like there's two different versions of New College that aren't really intertwined as of yet," he said. "It doesn't help that like they're mostly physically isolated from campus, so it's kind of hard to connect."
Following the trend of LGBTQ+ students feeling less safe on campus, Bustamante — who identifies as bisexual — said he's seen student-athletes taking videos of LGBTQ+ students at parties, which he said has made them feel unsafe and targeted.
He also said the students have felt an increase in police presence since the new administration took over, which is something that has made dissenting students feel unsafe.
Bustamante was also involved in some of the student protests against the changes at New College, but he said he's seen them less more recently.
"There's a certain fatigue that comes from realizing that nothing you do has any impact," he said.
Board of Trustees faculty representative Amy Reid, who often serves as the dissenting voice in an otherwise united conservative board, said the changes at the college can be seen symbolically in the artificial turf placed on the campus.
The fake grass has replaced real grass throughout campus since last spring.
"That changes the way the campus feels. But it also really speaks to the superficiality and destruction of many of the changes that are taking place on campus," Reid said. "Building a strong academic program, building a strong athletic program takes time. And what we've seen is an imperative to make superficial changes whether the creation of an athletic program without sports facilities or the proposal of master's program without faculty or an online program with zero faculty consultation and zero market analysis."
Reid said the changes do not support the long-term viability of New College as a residential liberal arts school.
Following many of the changes at New College, the school's retention rate of first-year students plummeted and dropout rates spiked, according to metrics shared by the college's provost on Oct. 12. In the 2023 U.S. News and World Report rankings of top liberal arts colleges in the country, New College dropped 24 spots compared to the previous year.
Under the new board majority, the college denied tenure to five professors who were already previously recommended to receive it despite boisterous protests against the impending decision. Students, faculty and staff rallied before the meeting to urge the board to grant tenure to the professors, and the union expressed grim feelings about the future of New College following the meeting.
The following fall semester, a third of New College's faculty departed, a figure the college's provost called "ridiculously high".
In January, Corcoran announced a new online degree program in collaboration with billionaire GOP megadonor Joe Ricketts, which the college's faculty later disapproved, citing a lack of input allowed from faculty in the program's design.
A former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and state education commissioner, Corcoran had no higher education experience before being selected as New College's president. Despite this, the school's board of trustees selected Corcoran with little discussion regarding the other two candidates for the job.
Only two board members voted against Corcoran to be the college's full-time president: Reid and student representative Grace Keenan.
The Herald-Tribune reached out to Corcoran to discuss his last year as president, but his office canceled a scheduled interview in January and was unavailable for comment before publication. Throughout his administration, Corcoran has called back to his goal of restoring a classical liberal arts education at New College.
At a public forum last fall, Corcoran called his administration's transition "tumultuous" and the student-athletes a "new genre" of student for the college.
"We've had this very tumultuous time," Corcoran said. "We've had, to say it nicely, a very very difficult — in many ways unhealthy — transition."
Christopher Rufo, a conservative, anti-diversity activist and one of the New College board members appointed by DeSantis, produced a nine-minute mini-documentary about the turmoil at New College. In it, he said the fight for classical liberal arts education had "just begun."
"The takeover of New College has changed the dynamics of America’s culture war and, if successful, will provide a model for conservatives across the nation," Rufo wrote on his substack.
Blowback
The changes were greeted icily by many students and alumni. At the first meeting of the new board in January 2023, students and alumni organized mass protests and rallies outside beforehand featuring prominent Democratic legislators and activists.
DeSantis used New College as a backdrop for signing a bill that banned diversity funding to Florida's public universities. Students protested in the area surrounding the college's bayfront College Hall with chants that could be heard inside the building during the signing.
In his remarks at the bill signing, Corcoran cracked a joke about the audible protests, telling the audience that he had turned the air off in the dorms and that was why the students were so upset. Trustee Rufo called the protests "kindergarten-level."
Following the signing, Rufo engaged the protesters outside, where a student eventually spat on his shoes. Rufo pressed assault charges against the student and only dropped them once the student transferred from New College.
Libby Harrity, the former New College student and current Hampshire College student who transferred following the Rufo incident, said many other former New College students have found refuge at the Massachusetts liberal arts school.
Fifty-eight former New College students have transferred to Hampshire College, according to the school's media spokesperson. The college has also received 101 applications, they added.
The students who transferred from New College to Hampshire College feel like asylum seekers, Harrity said. Students mourn the old New College they remember.
"A lot of the students, especially who came this spring, it's like they've they've been shipped to us from the trenches," Harrity said. "There's exhaustion and trauma and like, you know, continued, like feelings of stress and fear for a lot of the students, especially those that that, you know, are Florida natives."
For the college's commencement ceremony last spring, Corcoran invited former President Donald Trump's COVID advisor Scott Atlas to speak. Students instead organized an alternative commencement at the Sarasota Art Museum, but those who did attend the college's official ceremony turned their backs to Atlas as he spoke.
Jono Miller, an alumnus of New College in 1974, attends the school's board of trustees meetings regularly and is the president of the activist organization NCF Freedom.
He said that despite the college moving forward with changes in the wake of boisterous protest, he's seen success in the resistance. However, there's been a firehose of new challenges to contend with each day, and it can be difficult to keep up with at times, Miller said.
Even so, he said he sees himself as an optimist, almost out of necessity.
Even a year later, New College Board of Trustees meetings are filled with public commenters seeking to voice their disapproval of the college's direction.
Miller said organizations such as NCF Freedom have been consistent in showing up to meetings and making their voices heard, and that they believe they can retain New College's original values of academic freedom and shared governance.
"I just don't think you can run into a situation like this strictly top-down without the support of the participants," Miller said. "In the long run, that sort of heavy-handedness is not going to prevail."
Follow Herald-Tribune Education Reporter Steven Walker on Twitter at @swalker_7. He can be reached at sbwalker@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: New College has rocky road one year into conservative transformation
