Thursday's letters: For acceptance, try a college town, stand up for New College

College towns offer diversity, support

I want to thank Herald-Tribune reporter Samantha Gholar for her Jan. 15 front-page story, “To stay or to go." I understand the concerns of parents raising LGBTQ+ children in Florida.

With an academic focus and experience in adolescent psychology and suicide prevention, I know how vulnerable children subject to bullying can be.

I can’t claim to represent the climate in Sarasota schools or playgrounds. I am responding only to the lack of support the parents reported and their fear about the changing political environment.

More:How to send a letter to the editor

I hope parents feeling a need to move consider a college town. My husband and I live part time in Ithaca, New York, an international university town that supports individual expression.

More:It's time to end the harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across Florida

It is a community proud to have dozens of different first languages represented in every elementary school. Not just tolerance, but positive support exists throughout the school system.

I don’t believe Sarasota school employees are hostile or intolerant, but the politics may make being friendly, or even discussing differences, far more challenging.

The feelings of a few parents may prevent discussion, limit reading materials and squelch the diverse forms of cultural expression that teach children to embrace inclusion. Nothing like a hostile school board to quash debate.

Brenda Bricker, Venice and Ithaca, New York

All should fight to save New College

I didn’t graduate from, nor even attend, New College. Neither did my children. And I doubt if my grandchildren will.

So, it seems that I don’t have a dog in this fight, the one between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the people of Florida, who he thinks deserve to be pushed to the sidelines.

More:New College's legacy is on the line. Now's the time to protect it

Why do I care about the whole back-and-forth business between those who are “woke” and those who are “anti-aware”?

Because I do have a dog in this fight, and so does everyone in Florida. I’ve met both alumni and students from this college and have found them to be people who think. People who care about things. People who care about others, not just about themselves.

College rating systems have placed New College in the top tier for years. And a politician wants to cut it off at the knees?

Why? Of what is Gov. DeSantis frightened − a little diversity? For some, like him, diversity means something different. Something about which he doesn’t know. And, to him, that must be frightening.

It might be a lot to ask, but why not write a letter to your state representative and senator and tell them to leave New College alone?

Rodger Skidmore, Sarasota

Make paying off America’s debt job No. 1

With a debt of $31 trillion, our government passes another $1.7 trillion omnibus bill. Six trillion in the past two years.

When is the fiscal madness going to stop? Imagine a wealthy country that did not have massive debt and what it could conquer in the way of health care, and caring appropriately for the downtrodden, our veterans and the millions of homeless and addicted.

What day will we hear from our leadership that there will be no more overspending and some payment plan to pay off the national debt?

Folks, I want to encourage you to demand from our leadership that our country live within its means and make this the No. 1 focus to make America strong again.

No more government freebies, weird studies of shrimp on a treadmill and commercial flights for all of our representatives.

To you legislative folks, grow up and live within your means like your parents told you.

Clayton Thompson, Sarasota 

Speak out about DeSantis while you can

"When they come for your children, it’s time to flee.”

This is what our Sarasota neighbors − gay parents with straight kids and straight parents with nonbinary kids − have concluded, according to “LGBTQ+ families mull leaving Florida in wake of new culture laws,” an excellent but frightening Jan. 15 Page One article.

More:DeSantis wants people held accountable on COVID in Florida. You first, governor

Day by day our state is sinking deeper into a dystopian morass as Gov. Ron DeSantis and others abolish truth in our schools, pass laws that excuse the murder of Black Americans protesting against racism, try to impose thought control on our university teachers, discard mainstream science for deadly fringe beliefs, do nothing as thousands die needlessly of COVID-19, employ an "elections police force" to scare people away from voting, redefine oppression as freedom and speak a language aimed at spreading ignorance, hatred, bigotry and fear.

Although we might not want to become activists, we, the residents of Sarasota, have a sacred duty to alert our state and our country to the moral cesspool into which the DeSantis administration is plunging us. Who will they come for next? You!

Patrick Bidelman, Nokomis

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Find support for diversity in college towns, fight for New College