Three days into his second term, on Jan. 6, 2023, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis issued the starting shot in what he pitched as a battle to save higher education. All at once, DeSantis appointed six conservative allies to the Board of Trustees at the New College of Florida, a small school in Sarasota that is Florida’s designated honors college. With the bloc of new votes, the new trustees were transparent about their goal: destroy and rebuild the institution in a conservative image.
One of the trustees was conservative education activist and firebrand Chris Rufo, who said the goal was to turn New College of Florida into something akin to Hillsdale College, a Michigan private Christian school known for its conservative politics. From there, other public universities would be similarly taken over and transformed.
“We’re actually going to go and recapture a university,” an excited Rufo said on a podcast appearance. “The fight is on.”
The actions were swift. The president of New College, Patricia Okker, was summarily fired within weeks. In her place the newly constituted Board of Trustees installed Richard Corcoran, a lobbyist, political consultant and politician — and close ally of Gov. DeSantis — to oversee the transition. In an interview on a podcast hosted by the president of Hillsdale College, DeSantis let on that the plan had been Corcoran’s all along, saying Corcoran approached him for help to “get rid of New College” early in his tenure as governor.
“People think this is just a Florida thing – this is a big, big story that is coming for universities, even in liberal places.”Director Patrick Bresnan
Professors up for tenure were denied by the board even though they met criteria. The faculty member of the Board of Trustees resigned, saying that he didn’t want to play a role in the downfall of the institution. Teaching staff began a mass exodus from the institution as it was clear that the board would soon eliminate disciplines of study. The Gender Studies program was eliminated. Heaps of books were unceremoniously tossed in a dumpster.
The takeover of New College garnered national attention for some time until the cameras turned to other matters.
But while the nation’s attention span moved on, filmmakers stayed on campus and they stayed focused. The new documentary film First They Came For My College, with a theatrical run hitting Florida starting this month, tells the story of the conservative offensive through the eyes of New College students who lived the experience firsthand.
Film director Patrick Bresnan said that while showing the film in other, more liberal parts of the country like California, crowds have in some cases written off the story of New College as something that can only happen in Florida.
“ I'm just so quick to tell them, like, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be your governor. This is coming for California,'” Bresnan told WLRN. “People think this is just a Florida thing – this is a big, big story that is coming for universities, even in liberal places.”
Thanks to an explosion of funding from the state in order to push the conservative transition along, student athletes with lower GPAs flooded the New College campus, wooed by generous scholarships to a school that lacked athletic fields. Students who were already on campus were pushed out of on-campus housing and sent to hotels as the athletes and new conservative recruit students moved in to replace them.
In an attempt to counteract what Rufo called an "out-of-balance" student population that skewed heavily female, the school pressed its thumb on the scale to increase male enrollment.
The filmmakers follow a cohort of students trying to navigate the new reality, pushed off campus and no longer the masters of their own destiny at school.
LGBTQ+ openness
New College of Florida was founded in 1960 as a private liberal arts college, but it became an independent public institution in 2001. The educational model was different from typical schools; New College students largely choose their own curriculum. Over the years the focus on individuality led to a campus culture known for its eccentricity. As Hanbury, a producer of the film and alumni of the school told WLRN, it also led to the campus being known for its LGBTQ+ openness.
“ It was a very, very welcoming place to come out of the closet. I think it became that haven not because of anything the administration did over several decades, it was really largely a sort of self-selection process among generations of students,” said Hanbury.
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“ New College was a haven for eccentric young people, very self-motivated young people. People who wouldn't maybe fit in a school of 40,000 students, who were very clear about what they wanted to study, and who sought out others like themselves.”
But as the film shows, things shift. New recruits on campus hurl casual homophobic slurs, students feel less comfortable being themselves. An annual screening and performance of The Rocky Picture Horror Show takes on a new, defiant meaning in this context; students long to see the tradition survive.
Student journalists lament that no one in the government or the board will talk to them about what is happening on campus, a far cry from how things used to work. Likewise, students are also reluctant to talk, fearing repercussions. The journalism faculty advisor laments that she’s never seen anything like it.
Much of the story is told through the eyes of Chloe Rusek and Gaby Batista, staffers of the campus student newspaper The Catalyst. Their frustrated attempt to understand current events is met with silence and a feeling of impunity for their reporting subjects. The deafening silence, the behind-closed-doors aspect of it all, feeds a deep and unsettling sense of distrust among students, faculty, teachers and the community.
And it's not cheap. A report issued last year by the state found that since the takeover, New College of Florida has become the least fiscally efficient university in the entire state system. The university now spends nearly seven times more on operations per student than the University of Central Florida, by contrast. This year, New College took over the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus.
“A lot of what the administration has done is just cosmetic repairs to the school and a lot of PR,” said Hanbury. “It just came out that they're spending $800,000 a year on PR firms, on top of having 13 members of paid staff in their communications department. So they're really trying to fool the people of Florida about what they're up to.”
A turning point for education
Along the journey, students, parents and faculty members mount opposition to the takeover of their beloved campus. Destiny has a way of lending them a hand to fight back. Joshua Janniere, a newly recruited conservative student excited to participate in the right-wing revolution, initially laments that “it will take a long time to purge” the existing liberal culture at New College. But even he becomes an unlikely ally of the old guard, courted by the camaraderie and openness expressed by students there. The change at New College is real, yet much of the old world remains due to the resilience of all involved.
Bresnan said the takeover marked a turning point for higher education in the U.S, pointing to similar pushes taking place in Texas and North Carolina, where courses are being cancelled and faculty fired for teaching subjects that conservative politicians object to, or over defying universities on anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
“What began at New College has been rippling all around the country,” said Bresnan.
A pervasive metaphor throughout the film is that of a university as a garden. In a student-managed food forest, students ponder what makes a garden: mere plants, plants sowed with purpose, or something more akin to an outdoor communal space, a place for meetings and debate. The student-run garden is untidy but bountiful, a gathering space for discussion, togetherness and cooperation.
On the flipside, after Corcoran takes over the school, landscaping crews are seen splaying across campus meticulously managing the plant life in tidy garden spaces plucked from a golf course and that seem to scream: Keep Out.
The contrast "speaks volumes," said Hanbury.
In the wake of a hurricane, workers at the university cut down numerous fruit trees in the food forest down to the stump with a chainsaw. There was undoubtedly damage on campus from the hurricane, but the work is being done as students were ordered to leave the seaside campus. One student goes back to campus with a camera in the aftermath of the storm, seeing the crews in action. She feels a conspiracy afoot.
“This feels f*****g intentional,” she says through tears. “They call it a hurricane. But this damage was not done from the hurricane.”
First They Came For My College will be showing at O Cinema on Miami Beach between September 18 and September 24. Showings on September 18, 20 and 21 will include Q and As with the director and producers. For other showing dates across Florida in Gainesville, Sarasota, St. Petersburg and Tallahassee visit the film’s website.
