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Dec 18, 2023

“It’s Been Weird and Scary”: On the Front Lines of New College’s Student

By David Canfield Maya Wiley had never been to Sarasota, let alone the New

By David Canfield

Maya Wiley had never been to Sarasota, let alone the New College of Florida. This is not the kind of small, quiet, right-leaning beach city that a nationally known civil rights lawyer would typically drop into on a Thursday afternoon. The quirky public liberal arts school that's nestled within it has operated for decades as a kind of counterculture bubble, barely known to anyone outside of its zip code. But here Wiley sits before the 2023 graduating class—except, she's not on the campus. In response to the existential threats state Republicans have posed to the school's very way of being, students have assembled at the Sarasota Art Museum for a commencement on their terms, a celebration of a community under attack.

Wiley's set to deliver the evening's keynote, waiting on the makeshift stage in her hot pink blazer, beside the rest of the event's speakers. Among them are Helene Gold, the beloved college librarian who was abruptly fired just weeks ago after nearly five years of employment, and K.C. Casey, the commencement's organizer and a member of the graduating class, whose red-and-black mullet and gold short shorts scream New College pride. This ceremony is for the students and their families—and the audience is filled with them—but the press is everywhere too. Even Norway's public broadcaster, NRK, is hanging back with a camera crew.

Organized by a robust alumni network and funded by a social media campaign of supporters across the world, the cheekily titled [New] Commencement came together without the school administration's approval—its shaggy vibe both a protest of the new New College and an affirmation of the old New College. Upon entering, guests select a pin stating their preferred pronouns and wear it proudly. Some parents arrive in suits and dresses; others, shorts and a T-shirt. Students show off elaborate costumes—a graduation tradition—while hairstyles come, quite literally, in every color of the rainbow, complementing the surrounding rainbow capes and flags. "I’m personally reprising my role as Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show," Casey says in their opening remarks. "But I wore a shirt this time because I know I’ve got some grandparents here."

The mood is joyously defiant—a collective show of resistance following five relentless months of firings, crackdowns, and anti-LGBTQ+ policy. Wiley comments on this in her keynote address, telling students, "Your strength has not only mattered to you finding your full selves and your full voices and protecting them—what you have done is stood up and said, ‘I’m going to speak." She adds: "You are not just standing for yourselves, you’re standing for all of us." A procession follows—and then a frenzy as Wiley and the rest of the event's rock stars mingle with the crowd. A kind of euphoria settles in that, at least for one more year, New College's students graduated in style.

By the time I meet Wiley in a quiet corner outside of the museum's gates, daylight all but gone, she's fired up. "That was powerful," she tells me. "My hope is that the students who are coming up behind them…feel some wind in their sails, to face these headwinds that are blowing against the community they chose." Indeed, as she says of the graduating class, "The fact that they stood up in the face of that fear was true courage."

For me, none of this was surprising. It's the New College I knew as a student a decade ago. "Oh, you’re kidding," Wiley says when I tell her I’m an alum. "So it's personal."

Consisting of around 700 students, the 63-year-old New College—the state's designated honors college—has been put under a most unlikely national spotlight this year. On January 6, Florida governor Ron DeSantis stacked the school's board with conservative allies, indicating a plan to overhaul the progressive institution from the top down. One new trustee, the Republican provocateur Christopher Rufo, outlined a sweeping anti-"woke" plan of attack: to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; transform the curriculum; and "restructure" academic departments in a way that’d replace existing faculty. He and his allies have followed that blueprint to the letter.

By the end of January, the school's distinguished new president, Patricia Okker , was fired. At a spring board meeting, every professor up for tenure was rejected, despite overwhelming faculty and student approval. Faculty chair Matthew Lepinski resigned. Meanwhile, DeSantis has agreed to pump tens of millions of dollars into the school, just as it launches an ambitious athletics program, which does not currently exist within the school's infrastructure. Helene Gold, a key resource for students, was dismissed during crunch time for thesis submission and final-exam prep. (Gold, who became the second LGBTQ+ employee let go this year, says the move felt "very deliberate, to just inflict as much destabilization and cruel messaging as possible.") On the first day of finals week, DeSantis landed at New College to sign bills that restrict higher-ed instruction on race and gender, curtail faculty tenure protections, and ban DEI funding—all of which are part and parcel of DeSantis's crusade to radically transform public education in the state. "We were clearly being used as a pawn in political theater," as Gold puts it. Her words again rang painfully true when it was announced that Scott Atlas, former president Donald Trump's controversial COVID adviser, would be New College's official commencement speaker.

The day before [New] Commencement, I returned to the New College campus for the first time since my graduation, adjusting to the humid 85 degree temperature and a constant 30% chance of rain. Crossing the overpass that links the academic and residential sides of campus, I noticed a few students looking down, cracking up, as they decoded writing in rainbow chalk on the walkway. Ah, chalk on the overpass—a memory. They were, like most people this time of year, wearing tank tops and flip-flops. I felt ancient in my Skechers and long-sleeve gray tee. As they wandered on to their dorms, I read all eight rows of chalk for myself: "Ron DeSantis is a FREAKY LITTLE CAT BOY who Fucks himself to pictures of deer Wearing women's panties & sucking on his stanky ass BINKY." Okay, that was a new one.

I sat at a shady table outside of the school's cafeteria-slash-student center, Hamilton "Ham" Center, which may or may not have been the exact same place where I shared my first hangover omelet with my then hookup, now husband, 11 years ago. (Well, we were probably inside—Florida in August is brutal.) Another memory flooded in as I looked around: I could see my first dorm room from across the "Z Green" field; I could sense the slightly larger room I lived in thereafter, looming right behind the Ham building. (This was a small campus.) It was graduation week, so it was especially quiet. But the school's tiny campus instills a special kind of intimacy: From the sight of students waving to each other as they pass by, to the sound of scattered laughter—there was always warmth to take in wherever you were.

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I met with a few students that day. Libby Harrity, the second-year president of the student association's senate, smiled as they sat across from me in the late afternoon, adjusting their green Church Divinity School of the Pacific cap. As enthusiastic greetings kept interrupting our chat, I learned that Harrity was experiencing life as a kind of campus celebrity. "I was in The Sarasota Herald Tribune with my tits out," they bluntly explained before showing me the front-page story. Harrity ranks among the most outspoken of the school's spirited community members, and was photographed at a protest of DeSantis's New College arrival from earlier in the week. "My therapist is like, ‘I can't tell anybody I know you, it's horrible,’" Harrity said with a grin. "My picture's everywhere all the time." I asked what it's like to operate as a public figure, and they replied, "It's been weird and scary for a lot of students—especially a lot of my fellow trans people."

When Harrity attended high school in Orlando, Florida, they were harassed and made to feel abnormal—a story that felt all too familiar. I enrolled in New College knowing I’d come out here; the experience of learning to live as myself, without qualification or fear, was monumental. "I’ve never felt more at home than I feel here on this campus with these people," Harrity said. But that sense of sanctuary—which has fostered a vibrant queer scene unlike any other college in Florida—could be completely destroyed, they added, as a result of forced changes to the school's makeup.

They feel committed to the resistance, but at one point expressed regret for not being able to do more. "I also have been going through my own shit," they said with a sigh. Students in rigorous academic programs shouldn't be expected to take on major political fights just for the survival of their community, but many have felt that duty. "I was more active in the initial stages, but as thesis time came around and I had to balance that, I stepped to the sidelines a little more," said graduating student Jack Sobel, who attended high school in Maryland. "This is really a massive inconvenience to a lot of students, in the sense that it's not like you can transfer willy-nilly." Gold described the collective mood for me: "This is the thing. We all feel like, what can we do to fight a hostile fascist takeover?"

A few weeks ago, Gold told me she was given two hours to pack up her belongings and leave campus. She said she was told her librarian position was eliminated due to "reorganization." Professors canceled classes and went to the library with their students to be with her. Students saw Gold crying; Gold saw students crying. "I don't even know what to say," she told me, reflecting on the last month. Over Zoom, she maintained a feisty resolve, her funky chop haircut holding perfectly in the high humidity. She's lived in Florida for 26 years, but is now looking for jobs out of state. "I never wanted to see snow—that was my whole goal in life," she said. "But it's a fine trade-off: I’m happy to buy snow boots if it means political and personal safety." Several students told me they plan to transfer. Many professors are looking to leave; others have already announced their departures. Every graduate I spoke with couldn't answer whether they would have transferred if they hadn't completed their studies yet. "All of my fourth-year friends have this feeling of survivor's guilt," Harrity said, "about getting out."

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One such student, Sophia Brown, evoked a core memory on my reunion tour. Wearing a summer dress and, yes, flip-flops, she brought me back to the offices of the student-run newspaper, The Catalyst. A "Hands Off Our Faculty" sign hung in the window. That white Sharp microwave still centered the space, ready to heat up coffees for those late nights. Past issues lined the wall behind Brown, including a few I wrote for; somewhere in the adjacent filing cabinets, where the archives are stored, was my first-ever byline, an article in which I wrote of my 2012 freshman class, "Incoming students have universally embraced and appreciated what they consider the open, judgment-free atmosphere of the New College campus." (I also realized here that my husband was the first person I ever interviewed for a story. Ethics, David!)

As editor in chief, Brown has spearheaded reporting on this semester's chaos. She spoke to me in the measured cadence of a journalist asserting their findings. "We’ve all been on this arc throughout the past few months of having a sense of hope, then feeling it all crash down with the next big move, and then riding that loop over and over," she said. "It's still happening now." She had agreed to speak at both the [New] Commencement and the official commencement. The tricky balance between the two events—literally following Scott Atlas in the second's case—was not lost on her as we talked, nor was its weight. She's found her role as a student journalist especially difficult to negotiate of late.

"I need to be objective and unbiased in covering these events, and I hope I’ve done a pretty good job with that, but it's difficult when we as students are so much a part of the story," Brown said. "It's almost like a weird out-of-body experience sometimes—like as long as I’m recording all of it, it's not happening to me."

That sentiment has stuck with me. It's Friday night, I’m at last wearing flip-flops, and I’ve just heard the loudest "Go fuck yourself!" scream of my life. On a stage overlooking Sarasota Bay, Atlas had begun his commencement address by offering polite-enough congratulations. The graduating students’ protest—turning around in their chairs to face away from him—seemed equally undisruptive. But the speech has descended into a bizarre mix of conservative scolding, record-defending, misinformation spewing, and general rambling. The crowd gets restless. The boos get louder. The graduates stand. Guffaws punctuate mentions of Trump and Jared Kushner and "lockdowns." And yes, someone screams, "Go fuck yourself!" I take my notes quietly, standing on the patch of grass where alums have watched New College graduations for decades, but my blood is boiling. What's the fair way of telling this story, as a place that meant so much to you gets torn apart before your eyes, one hacky talking point at a time?

Sarasota cops circle the graduation, talking rowdy parents and siblings down in the crowd. They’d held security checks for entrance, including metal detectors and bag inspections—a New College first, in my experience. My husband, who was with me, says that this, oddly, made him feel safer. A few students agree. "It's kind of sad, but the biggest thing I can ask for out of this is physical safety," Jack Sobel told me days earlier. "With New College such a politicized destination at this point…it's kind of hard not to have the morbid thoughts go through your head. And I hate that." (Rumors of Proud Boys crashing a past event kept some in their dorms all day.) But so goes the cruel cycle of state security—the cynical formation of a partisan battleground that renders a space vulnerable to aggression, and thus, in need of protection.

As Atlas mumbles through his speech, instructing his listeners to accept "different views," an enormous chant overpowers him in unison: "Wrap it up!" Weakly, he asks for the chance to finish, then goes on for several more minutes amid jeers. It's less judgment than fact to say he has nothing of value to impart upon New College's graduating class. I’m reminded of what Maya Wiley told me the previous evening, when I asked her to draw the contrast between her and Atlas as New College's 2023 keynoters: "The students wanted a speaker who was going to express support for them and who they were."

In her speech, just before Wiley's at [New] Commencement, Sophia Brown said, "This new administration is in no position to authentically celebrate our community." I wondered if she’d strike a similarly spiky tone today. Immediately following Atlas, though, she meets the moment. "This semester, students have seen and heard the many voices of those who haven't experienced New College in the ways we have, attempting to define and dictate what it should mean," Brown says. "What I’m here to speak about today and what the ceremony should be dedicating to you is not what others want for it, but what we have made it," she adds to cheers. From there, Brown delivers a classic, corny student speech, peppered with specific anecdotes and inside jokes. But that's exactly its power; her speech tells a fair and accurate story of resilience, of the community that's still there, loud and proud.

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