Your agenda or whatever you would call it is one of the most u]intellectually embarrassing things I have ever read. The most useful thing you could do for the students of new college is humbly step aside. You are not in their league. You have this pretend earnestness that is so transparently, how can one say it, insincere. You draw a cartoon version of the things you want to talk about. Seriously, you make your "side" in all of this look a bit pathetic; like even if I were on your side to begin with I'd have serious doubt after reading this. Please step aside and let some serious people step up.
Agreed. On a more tedious note, his post is riddled with grammar issues. How can someone run an educational institution while failing to edit his work properly?
"One example of a dogmatic expression of wokeness is the assertion that America and its institutions are systemically racist and must be torn down."
Where is the analysis, the deep dive into the multivarious reality of New College and the current culture, which would satisfy the outsider - the person who is not coming in with Mr. DeSantis's ukase ringing in his or her ears, the bogus random imperial judgement that would demonstrate why all this is happening, why it is necessary, with a solid, informed definition of terms?
You come to an academic institution that teaches and values respect for facts, logic, history, open discussion, diversity of opinion, and you come with a totally random "mission" imposed on you - and on New College - by a man of unprecedented appetite for power.
Why don't you begin by noting that your nominal mission stems from unvetted, undocumented political rhetoric, and that by rational standards, your first order of business is to work to find out whether Mr. DeSantis's reasons for sending you to this tiny school hold up under impartial, objective scrutiny?
How would you respond if Mr. Biden, or Ms Harris, or anyone decided that your school in Manatee County fails to meet educational standards, because it is "unwoke," or "fascist"?
Before you go about firing people, removing the general counsel and president of the Board of Trustees, do the necessary studies that would either support or negate your objective. Meanwhile, try to get to know the people you wish to purge, and get your act together so that you have more than an empty signifier on which to hang all this delirious and possibly misguided activity.
> Where is the analysis, the deep dive into the multivarious reality of New College and the current culture, which would satisfy the outsider - the person who is not coming in with Mr. DeSantis's ukase ringing in his or her ears, the bogus random imperial judgement that would demonstrate why all this is happening, why it is necessary, with a solid, informed definition of terms?
Funny how this kind of demand for rigor is never applied when an academic is subject to a canceling attack for allegedly being "x-ist".
> How would you respond if Mr. Biden, or Ms Harris, or anyone decided that your school in Manatee County fails to meet educational standards, because it is "unwoke," or "fascist"?
This is a fully general counter argument. "Your doing something for a reason, how would you feel in Mr. Biden did something bad for a nonsense reason?" The left has already amply demonstrated over the past decades that they're perfectly willing to abuse any forms of power they acquire by any means legitimate or not to impose their will. Thus, there is no reason to attempt to appease those who've already amply demonstrated their lack of good faith.
Frankly, given that you just engaged in actions that might have resulted in me being cancelled under different circumstances, I find that hard to believe.
So, because Mr. Mar-a-Lago serially abused the power of his office and the public trust, he is part of the "left?" Speaking of faith, he doesn't pray - he preys. Look it up, Eugene.
By your own admission you lack the knowledge and experience to undertake the role. This is why your appointment is so utterly egregious. Virtually every aspect of your "plan" is hopelessly flawed and demonstrates a monumental lack of knowledge of how many of this works in a public institution operating under federal law. Perhaps the only thing that I take solace in is that the lack of understanding extends to being clueless that you are being used for someone else's ambitions and you too will be thrown under the bus when you outstay your immediate purpose. You cannot fix something that isn't broken, Mr. Speir. The very fact that you are expressing that high acceptance rates and low enrollment are "problems" demonstrates that you do not even have basic knowledge of the fact that those things intersect. You can't accept less students and raise enrollment. That sir, is backward math. Also, you cannot change culture with policy. A culture comes from the core values of the society and it's members. Do you believe that the students will simply stop using "woke" pronouns because you say so? If you do, you clearly haven't met many of these incredible young people.
I hope Eddie Speir will remove this defamatory comment and others. I have removed the statements that Eugine deemed misleading. We need to have productive conversations, not invective.
I think you should keep the Counsel on the board, but it will be a lot more entertaining if you don't.
It's also hilarious - in a sad sort of way - that a guy who doesn't even know basic rules of order is now in charge and thinks he knows all the solutions to all the problems that never existed.
As a NCF student (third year mathematics major), I want to thank you and your fellow trustees for your dedication to reforming this institution. Please don’t give up or back down so much as an inch. The campus culture has long since become extremely toxic and politically oriented. I can’t understand how anyone who saw the reactions on behalf of both the faculty and the students in the meetings on the 25th could even begin to deny this simple fact. Just trust that there *are* students on campus who support this transition and are looking forward to the day when their political views and opinions aren’t deemed heretical—we have been quiet for a long time on this campus. But things are about to change!
Yeah, those new trustees got kind of shoehorned in there. I think you’re a minority opinion trying to make Eddie think that’s what most of the school wants.
No, I simply want Eddie and the other trustees to be aware that there are recorded instances of students at this university being ostracized and attacked based on their differing political opinions and that, regardless of NCF’s idealized aspirations to defending the minority, it is both overwhelmingly affluent white kids and demonstrably incapable of tolerating minority opinion—regardless of where those opinions come from. Are you a member of the student forum? If so, please explain why so many especially tolerant students have been extremely busy today calling people they disagree with fascists and stupid. Provost Shermann said it best during the meeting—you are proving their point.
I sincerely appreciate your remarks. If you ever see me on campus—I’m a very tall guy with moderately long hair and normally dressed pretty conservatively—I would love to speak with you—whether it’s about NCF or academics or politics. I would never deny that there are genuinely considerate students on the campus. I would just like to point out that, if you’re a member of the school forum, you’d have to admit that the culture of the campus as disseminated there is overwhelmingly toxic. In the past 2 days alone there have been relentless attacks on the trustees that amount to nothing more than ad hominem attacks and, in several instances, are borderline if not entirely threatening. How would this make a student such as myself feel?
Maybe I’m the “minority” opinion on this campus but your “tolerant” majority has so effectively run this college and its finances into the ground that the time for moral grandstanding about “tolerance” and “acceptance “ is over. The very consultants the university hired to determine the reasons behind such poor enrollment numbers blatantly contradicts the altruism of these sentiments.
The refusal of the New College community to stand up for the 20% of kids who drop out in their first year is myopic. During my orientation there over 10% of my incoming class dropped out. That didn't cause the professors to give those of us who stayed more attention that's for sure!
No. It means I’m currently in the process of planning a class/tutorial on Galois cohomology and Class Field Theory. I invite you to explain your own understanding of these topics. Hope you have enough toes.
I understand your anger -but Please do not attack the STUDENTS. We may not agree with with Jesse, but she, like all of the students here deserve their FIRST AMENDMENT rights
We want tolerance for all viewpoints for our students. Otherwise, we will become what the Board of Trustees wants us
Hi Jessie, I think it is fair to say that we are not in the same camp on this issue, but I believe everyone should have their voice heard. So I would like to invite you to contact me and tell me about issues you have experienced at NCF. By that, I mean what has the college, faculty, staff done specifically that has singled you out for your political or ideological ideas? I am not talking about what other students have said or done, I am talking about the institution. How have you been discriminated against or mistreated by the institution? I am not asking to attack you or launch a rebuttal, I genuinely want to here about it if it going on.
If other students mistreat him then that is a culture problem that needs to be addressed. He is LIVING at the school but as you know, students spend very little time with professors and nearly all of their 4 years surrounded by other students.
The school has always failed to address its extremely high drop out rate.
If we use your logic and apply it more widely, what you are saying is that if a member or members within an institutional setting do something unacceptable, the institution is the problem. That would be the same as saying if a police officer mistreats a citizen, the whole police force is corrupt. I do not believe that to be the case. As far as drop out in is concerned, have you seen the state of that campus? When you cash starve and institution and leave it with deferred maintenance up the wazoo of course students willl leave. The dorms are disgusting, many of them so bad that they have had to be taken out of service. There are a plethora of reasons why drop out rates are high and they need to be addressed but that is not going to be fixed by any of the plans put forward.
How do u manage to fit SO much genius into such a tiny post? You should definitely circle back with Ronny and see if he can waive Sunshine laws for you. Having to abide by public meeting rules can be such a drag. Clearly you are not familiar with Sunshine Laws nor Robert’s Rules or you would know that even posting your voting “PLAN” for Tuesday’s meeting is a potential violation. Hopefully your soon-to-be colleagues won’t be engaging with you on this genius post or you will all have plenty of time to tweak your plan (and pray) from jail. Not sure why you are pleading for home delivery of Robert’s Rules. Do u not have internet service to google from your millennium bunker?
I have some free advice for you. Leave the smart kids alone and crawl back to your cave. Liberty University might have a job opening for you- I think their head hypocrite is taking some personal time away for rehab.
This was an embarrassing trainwreck to watch. Your 10 minute hold up regarding reclassifying psychology and economics was painful. Do you need information spoonfed to you? You certainly had access to the agenda beforehand, it was a public document. what do you mean “I don’t know what I don’t know,”? if you cannot adequately research items that have been printed on the agenda before meetings then please step down humbly. It’s a simple reclassification about two strategic points of interest for to increase performance metrics for a school you have been entrusted to improve. You may not see eye to eye with faculty but this was an uninformed and contrarian reaction to a non-partisan issue.
You and the rest of this board are making uninformed and rash decisions based on your impressions of New College less than a year into the job without seeing how it works. Firing the face of the organization in the first meeting (who students and faculty seem to adore, who has improved performance metrics, who has undoubtedly improved student-administrative trust after years of strife) was reckless and transparently a move to install some yes-men.
The longer this goes on the longer it looks like a hack job by some people with money and no equivalent experience who think they own the place because a big boy in a suit who wants to go to the White House said you could treat this institute of higher learning like a toy. If you want that, then go back to your private school you founded with no formal education experience so you can play favorites among parents like the big man you want to feel like.
Media sees that you are an embarrassment (if you dislike being a public figure, then don’t cry to USA Today about being covered).
Students see that you are an embarrassment and don’t care to deliver on improving college facilities or student life. Just go home, don’t come back. If you want this to be a young conservative Mecca then good luck, because without those facilities improvements I doubt any of those kids will want to stay without a robust college culture, rooms without mold, rooms renovated since 1960, and adequate food access.
Gutting the existing students and faculty without those tangible investments into infrastructure is going to sink you because the existing kinship is what makes the crumbling infrastructure bearable. I hope it does sink you if this is what you’re set on.
No, that would be anti-American TRAITOR Republicans like you who are neither intelligent nor patriotic. You are ignorant, fascist, anti-American, anti-US Constitution, anti-Democracy, anti-freedom, seditious, criminal, tRump TRAITORS with absolutely no ability to reason, observe, or use logic. Absolutely ignorant and anti-American. Move to Russia where you belong.
No, everything I said definitely applies to you and your ilk. If you think they are insults, then stop acting and believing the way you do because every statement is true.
How about you stop projecting your flaws onto everybody else. Look just because you and your ilk hate the country, hate the constitution (or rather believe it should be "interpreted" as a "living document" in ways that have nothing to do with the text), believe in letting criminals freely loot stores, riot, and burn down cities, and can't tell the difference between a man and a woman, doesn't mean everyone has these problems.
Don’t resort to name-calling. It feeds the fire. I am upset about this new agenda for my beloved alma mater and the fight isn’t over. But using this as a platform for playground-level taunts only foments extreme reactions from people like Eddie.
To reiterate, I feel your anger because it is also mine.
New College is the only school my senior wanted to go to and applied to attend. Now, with your crazy dogma and praying before meetings philosophy she isn't sure about her decision anymore. You and your supporters are making this small, inclusive, excellent College a place where students are scared because Proud Boys are there to terrorize them. Leave this school alone!
We will gladly take your daughter at U of Tampa or Rollins College, where science and critical thinking are paramount. We study all religions and the pros and cons of each. We respect all humans right to choose if they want to wear a mask or if they want to use pronouns. We don't judge them with silly words like woke. That's for the simple minded uneducated people afraid of the world around them changing. They seek to live in a 1950s whites only world where women like your daughter spent their time in the kitchen and making sure they had on make up when their husbands returned home from work,.
> where science and critical thinking are paramount.
So those universities embrace critical thinking.
> We don't judge them with silly words like woke.
However, they don't judge people for believing BS. A key component of science and critical thinking is being able to tell the true from the false, and that requires being "judgmental".
You know, my comment above probably didn't go far enough. Some one who makes decisions on the basis of common sense is "judgmental".
A "critical thinker", in the sense the phrase is used in modern academia (as opposed to its common usage), is someone who argues via an appeal to nihilism that since language is ultimately a social construct, his thesis is just as good as any other.
Exactly how will the work effort change when you have professors afraid of losing their job if they piss off the gestapo. Sounds like indoctrination to me. Anyone who disagrees is out.
FYI- being "woke" means being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. She is very much WOKE and not ashamed of it. Your vision for the school is NOT the school she applied to attend. Having Proud Boys on campus is NOT a safe environment.
> Having Proud Boys on campus is NOT a safe environment.
I mean what if the students need to riot to stop Ann Coulter or some other conservative speaker from speaking on campus. How can the students do that with the Proud Boys on campus?
Being Woke means being a racist and judging people by their skin color instead of by their personality or soul. That's what we're up against-- woke is racism repackaged so that woke people can pat themselves on the back for their puerile racism.
Free advice: Enroll in one of New College's writing courses before you continue to write these error-filled posts. Also, "Wokeness" is a set of fantastical beliefs concocted by right-wing extremists, so cross out all those proposals a.s.a.p. Finally, rather than prayer, maybe try a few moments of silence to be used for whatever purpose you need as individuals.
The fact that he is mentioning the religion of the person Commenting IS a problem. I'm happy to share if clarified, but it sure looks anti-semetic to me. Since this is public I'm hoping all will see
Why do the board chair and president need to be removed? Can you point to a specific violation of trust? Or do you just wish to get rid of anyone who doesn’t agree with you?
I am only suggesting here that we have a discussion as a board to determine if they are the right people to lead the school now that the majority of the Board of Trustees is most likely planning on moving the college in a new direction.
The new direction equals Floridas version of Liberty University or that fake Hillsdale school. The ones that think we shouldn't teach slavery or that the constitution specifically excluded women and blacks via a negotiated compromise. It was ok for women to never vote and they don't understand why women even "fought for such things".
There's a lot more to their "new direction" of whitewashing history and doing everything they can to not teach reality. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to tell you Christopher Columbus discovered America again. What a joke. Bye bye New College.
Well, Columbus didn't. He stumbled on what he thought was the East Indies. It was the Bahamas. Oops. This was some five centuries after Lief Erickson had made his way to American shores, and some fifteen thousand years after the first historically-agreed-upon settlers of North America walked across what is now the Bering Strait.
Who knows, maybe New College will teach kids to use Google now that its decent teachers will be leaving the looming cesspool.
And Lief Erickson's discovery didn't spread and was forgotten after Vinland failed. Columbus is the one responsible for the enduring connection between the Old and New World.
"Florida" and "high quality education" aren't often used in the same sentence. There's a reason I burn resumes listing Florida institutions. I don't hire window lickers.
I’m sure your intention was to be snarky, but this is a highly ranked school that draws, almost exclusively, students who have graduated in the top 10% of their high schools and produces leaders in virtually every field imaginable.
Michelle, there are not very many classical liberal arts schools in America at all-- but the ones there are have been getting more and more selective and have a giant surge in applicants. New College has been in danger of shutting down many times and does not have the level of interest that Hillsdale has. Hillsdale also has gender parity, whereas New College has been repelling males for decades.
The former leadership of my university (not in Florida) fired a large number of employees and then rehired about half of them. Do you know how those remaining employees feel? Absolutely betrayed, nearly 3 years later. Will they go above the minimum required? Sure, some will. Because they care about the students and each other. But morale remains in the sub-basement. Many lower-level administrators are downright bitter and do as little as they can. So much for efficiencies.
Is that the legacy you want?
There are reasonable conversations one can have about dogmatism. It's not confined to the left, as your own words reveal.
But what you plan is a putsch, not a conversation. You are about to destroy this college, a little gem in Florida.
Is that the legacy you want? Right now, it's the legacy you're choosing.
This is true! Unfortunately the people who got brutally reshuffled are the ones who do the real work - they'd have been called "secretaries" a few decades ago, although it's been longer than that since faculty got actual secretarial support. These are the people who process paperwork. They used to supervise work-study students, administer grants, etc. A lot of that now falls on faculty who were already stretched paper-thin.
We do have heaps of assistant provosts and "executive directors" of various internal offices, though. Who could've imagine we needed so many?
Sounds like the person doing the firing was some combination of incompetent, cowardly, or lacking in support from above. Useless "executive directors" and woke bureaucrats can scream remarkably loudly when their jobs are threatened, heck see many of the comments on this very substack.
Oh, there was support from above, all right. The orders came from the very top, or at least from the Provost's office. Incompetence and cowardice tends to increase more than you'd think as you go up the ladder. Higher-level administrators crow about being part of a "national market," insist on being paid in Appalachia as if they were paying Silicon Valley prices, and stay in the job for a couple of years before moving up and out. We've had at least a couple of "cabinet" appointments where the people hired were basically being driven out of town at knifepoint from their former positions. The past president was so disliked at his previous post that a random prof emailed me a rant - out of the blue - from the other side of the country after seeing me make some mild criticisms of the prez in our local alt-weekly; he must've set a Google alert. And I'm a nobody; I don't even have tenure!
Also, no one gives a single shit about when and where you personally pray. It's the making other people join and listen that infringes upon their rights. But, if you insist on making a spectacle of it, friendly reminder that JC wouldn't approve (Matthew 6:5, Luke 20:46-47).
Eddie;
My name is Chaz Stevens, in certain circles I'm a well-known First Amendment activist championing the need for a robust wall between Church and State.
Seems that you're opening up a door ... and thanks for that, as I'm going to seek permission to perform a Satanic invocation at your Trustee meeting.
Won't be the first time I've done that ... lost count in fact.
See you soon.
XOXOXO
Call 1-888-Go-Satan .... you'll find great life long advice there.
Oh, I'm sure this "Christian mother" is already very familiar with Satan.
Your agenda or whatever you would call it is one of the most u]intellectually embarrassing things I have ever read. The most useful thing you could do for the students of new college is humbly step aside. You are not in their league. You have this pretend earnestness that is so transparently, how can one say it, insincere. You draw a cartoon version of the things you want to talk about. Seriously, you make your "side" in all of this look a bit pathetic; like even if I were on your side to begin with I'd have serious doubt after reading this. Please step aside and let some serious people step up.
Agreed. On a more tedious note, his post is riddled with grammar issues. How can someone run an educational institution while failing to edit his work properly?
"One example of a dogmatic expression of wokeness is the assertion that America and its institutions are systemically racist and must be torn down."
Where is the analysis, the deep dive into the multivarious reality of New College and the current culture, which would satisfy the outsider - the person who is not coming in with Mr. DeSantis's ukase ringing in his or her ears, the bogus random imperial judgement that would demonstrate why all this is happening, why it is necessary, with a solid, informed definition of terms?
You come to an academic institution that teaches and values respect for facts, logic, history, open discussion, diversity of opinion, and you come with a totally random "mission" imposed on you - and on New College - by a man of unprecedented appetite for power.
Why don't you begin by noting that your nominal mission stems from unvetted, undocumented political rhetoric, and that by rational standards, your first order of business is to work to find out whether Mr. DeSantis's reasons for sending you to this tiny school hold up under impartial, objective scrutiny?
How would you respond if Mr. Biden, or Ms Harris, or anyone decided that your school in Manatee County fails to meet educational standards, because it is "unwoke," or "fascist"?
Before you go about firing people, removing the general counsel and president of the Board of Trustees, do the necessary studies that would either support or negate your objective. Meanwhile, try to get to know the people you wish to purge, and get your act together so that you have more than an empty signifier on which to hang all this delirious and possibly misguided activity.
> Where is the analysis, the deep dive into the multivarious reality of New College and the current culture, which would satisfy the outsider - the person who is not coming in with Mr. DeSantis's ukase ringing in his or her ears, the bogus random imperial judgement that would demonstrate why all this is happening, why it is necessary, with a solid, informed definition of terms?
Funny how this kind of demand for rigor is never applied when an academic is subject to a canceling attack for allegedly being "x-ist".
> How would you respond if Mr. Biden, or Ms Harris, or anyone decided that your school in Manatee County fails to meet educational standards, because it is "unwoke," or "fascist"?
This is a fully general counter argument. "Your doing something for a reason, how would you feel in Mr. Biden did something bad for a nonsense reason?" The left has already amply demonstrated over the past decades that they're perfectly willing to abuse any forms of power they acquire by any means legitimate or not to impose their will. Thus, there is no reason to attempt to appease those who've already amply demonstrated their lack of good faith.
What academic at New College was "subject to a cancelling attack"? Or in any other Florida university?
Sir, help us at New College
As a matter of fact there is no record in living memory of a cancellation on our campus.
Frankly, given that you just engaged in actions that might have resulted in me being cancelled under different circumstances, I find that hard to believe.
Your efforts are valiant, but ultimately you're just feeding this troll
Good, except you've already demonstrated your willingness to blatantly lie.
> I saw you post about a conspiracy theory. Do you endorse or reject it?
Your hallucinations really aren't adding to your credibility here.
So, because Mr. Mar-a-Lago serially abused the power of his office and the public trust, he is part of the "left?" Speaking of faith, he doesn't pray - he preys. Look it up, Eugene.
> So, because Mr. Mar-a-Lago serially abused the power of his office and the public trust
You mean by not going after the leftists hard enough. Yes, I admit that was a mistake.
You're an imbecile.
By your own admission you lack the knowledge and experience to undertake the role. This is why your appointment is so utterly egregious. Virtually every aspect of your "plan" is hopelessly flawed and demonstrates a monumental lack of knowledge of how many of this works in a public institution operating under federal law. Perhaps the only thing that I take solace in is that the lack of understanding extends to being clueless that you are being used for someone else's ambitions and you too will be thrown under the bus when you outstay your immediate purpose. You cannot fix something that isn't broken, Mr. Speir. The very fact that you are expressing that high acceptance rates and low enrollment are "problems" demonstrates that you do not even have basic knowledge of the fact that those things intersect. You can't accept less students and raise enrollment. That sir, is backward math. Also, you cannot change culture with policy. A culture comes from the core values of the society and it's members. Do you believe that the students will simply stop using "woke" pronouns because you say so? If you do, you clearly haven't met many of these incredible young people.
How is it possible to be concerned with religion in the school, then insist to begin meetings with prayer? Seems hypocritical.
Beginning meetings with a prayer is much less intrusive than permeating a quasi-religion into every aspect of the College.
I promise you, there is no quasi-religion permeating New College. It's a lot of things, but "dogmatic wokeness" isn't one of 'em.
Well, that it appears to employ lying scumbags like Nicolas Delon isn't a good sign.
I hope Eddie Speir will remove this defamatory comment and others. I have removed the statements that Eugine deemed misleading. We need to have productive conversations, not invective.
That's not a very good answer
Are you using the state's definition of 'woke'?
I think you should keep the Counsel on the board, but it will be a lot more entertaining if you don't.
It's also hilarious - in a sad sort of way - that a guy who doesn't even know basic rules of order is now in charge and thinks he knows all the solutions to all the problems that never existed.
As a NCF student (third year mathematics major), I want to thank you and your fellow trustees for your dedication to reforming this institution. Please don’t give up or back down so much as an inch. The campus culture has long since become extremely toxic and politically oriented. I can’t understand how anyone who saw the reactions on behalf of both the faculty and the students in the meetings on the 25th could even begin to deny this simple fact. Just trust that there *are* students on campus who support this transition and are looking forward to the day when their political views and opinions aren’t deemed heretical—we have been quiet for a long time on this campus. But things are about to change!
There are students who believe as you do. There's just a LOT more that don't. You're a math major... do the math.
I’ll do the math—7 trustees appointed by DeSantis to a board of 13. We call that a majority.
Yeah, those new trustees got kind of shoehorned in there. I think you’re a minority opinion trying to make Eddie think that’s what most of the school wants.
No, I simply want Eddie and the other trustees to be aware that there are recorded instances of students at this university being ostracized and attacked based on their differing political opinions and that, regardless of NCF’s idealized aspirations to defending the minority, it is both overwhelmingly affluent white kids and demonstrably incapable of tolerating minority opinion—regardless of where those opinions come from. Are you a member of the student forum? If so, please explain why so many especially tolerant students have been extremely busy today calling people they disagree with fascists and stupid. Provost Shermann said it best during the meeting—you are proving their point.
You bring up a good point and you SHOULD be allowed to express you viewpoint
I will defend you and your right to be seen and heard and respected.
If you see me on campus- I will be YOUR ally, despite our differing views
LOVE your neighbor
I sincerely appreciate your remarks. If you ever see me on campus—I’m a very tall guy with moderately long hair and normally dressed pretty conservatively—I would love to speak with you—whether it’s about NCF or academics or politics. I would never deny that there are genuinely considerate students on the campus. I would just like to point out that, if you’re a member of the school forum, you’d have to admit that the culture of the campus as disseminated there is overwhelmingly toxic. In the past 2 days alone there have been relentless attacks on the trustees that amount to nothing more than ad hominem attacks and, in several instances, are borderline if not entirely threatening. How would this make a student such as myself feel?
Maybe I’m the “minority” opinion on this campus but your “tolerant” majority has so effectively run this college and its finances into the ground that the time for moral grandstanding about “tolerance” and “acceptance “ is over. The very consultants the university hired to determine the reasons behind such poor enrollment numbers blatantly contradicts the altruism of these sentiments.
The refusal of the New College community to stand up for the 20% of kids who drop out in their first year is myopic. During my orientation there over 10% of my incoming class dropped out. That didn't cause the professors to give those of us who stayed more attention that's for sure!
Wow, a Florida math major. Does that mean you can count on your toes as well as your fingers?
No. It means I’m currently in the process of planning a class/tutorial on Galois cohomology and Class Field Theory. I invite you to explain your own understanding of these topics. Hope you have enough toes.
And you should be so proud of that!
I understand your anger -but Please do not attack the STUDENTS. We may not agree with with Jesse, but she, like all of the students here deserve their FIRST AMENDMENT rights
We want tolerance for all viewpoints for our students. Otherwise, we will become what the Board of Trustees wants us
I suspect there are a lot more students like you, who are to scared of their teachers to even post here.
They should be. Normal people need to bully and ostracize conservatives any chance they get.
So you admit "cancel culture" exists. Only you're now claiming it's a good thing.
Case in point.
Hi Jessie, I think it is fair to say that we are not in the same camp on this issue, but I believe everyone should have their voice heard. So I would like to invite you to contact me and tell me about issues you have experienced at NCF. By that, I mean what has the college, faculty, staff done specifically that has singled you out for your political or ideological ideas? I am not talking about what other students have said or done, I am talking about the institution. How have you been discriminated against or mistreated by the institution? I am not asking to attack you or launch a rebuttal, I genuinely want to here about it if it going on.
If other students mistreat him then that is a culture problem that needs to be addressed. He is LIVING at the school but as you know, students spend very little time with professors and nearly all of their 4 years surrounded by other students.
The school has always failed to address its extremely high drop out rate.
If we use your logic and apply it more widely, what you are saying is that if a member or members within an institutional setting do something unacceptable, the institution is the problem. That would be the same as saying if a police officer mistreats a citizen, the whole police force is corrupt. I do not believe that to be the case. As far as drop out in is concerned, have you seen the state of that campus? When you cash starve and institution and leave it with deferred maintenance up the wazoo of course students willl leave. The dorms are disgusting, many of them so bad that they have had to be taken out of service. There are a plethora of reasons why drop out rates are high and they need to be addressed but that is not going to be fixed by any of the plans put forward.
How do u manage to fit SO much genius into such a tiny post? You should definitely circle back with Ronny and see if he can waive Sunshine laws for you. Having to abide by public meeting rules can be such a drag. Clearly you are not familiar with Sunshine Laws nor Robert’s Rules or you would know that even posting your voting “PLAN” for Tuesday’s meeting is a potential violation. Hopefully your soon-to-be colleagues won’t be engaging with you on this genius post or you will all have plenty of time to tweak your plan (and pray) from jail. Not sure why you are pleading for home delivery of Robert’s Rules. Do u not have internet service to google from your millennium bunker?
I have some free advice for you. Leave the smart kids alone and crawl back to your cave. Liberty University might have a job opening for you- I think their head hypocrite is taking some personal time away for rehab.
https://myfloridalegal.com/pages.nsf/Main/321B47083D80C4CD8525791B006A54E3
Help us at New college did he not just violate Sunshine Law?
This was an embarrassing trainwreck to watch. Your 10 minute hold up regarding reclassifying psychology and economics was painful. Do you need information spoonfed to you? You certainly had access to the agenda beforehand, it was a public document. what do you mean “I don’t know what I don’t know,”? if you cannot adequately research items that have been printed on the agenda before meetings then please step down humbly. It’s a simple reclassification about two strategic points of interest for to increase performance metrics for a school you have been entrusted to improve. You may not see eye to eye with faculty but this was an uninformed and contrarian reaction to a non-partisan issue.
You and the rest of this board are making uninformed and rash decisions based on your impressions of New College less than a year into the job without seeing how it works. Firing the face of the organization in the first meeting (who students and faculty seem to adore, who has improved performance metrics, who has undoubtedly improved student-administrative trust after years of strife) was reckless and transparently a move to install some yes-men.
The longer this goes on the longer it looks like a hack job by some people with money and no equivalent experience who think they own the place because a big boy in a suit who wants to go to the White House said you could treat this institute of higher learning like a toy. If you want that, then go back to your private school you founded with no formal education experience so you can play favorites among parents like the big man you want to feel like.
Media sees that you are an embarrassment (if you dislike being a public figure, then don’t cry to USA Today about being covered).
Students see that you are an embarrassment and don’t care to deliver on improving college facilities or student life. Just go home, don’t come back. If you want this to be a young conservative Mecca then good luck, because without those facilities improvements I doubt any of those kids will want to stay without a robust college culture, rooms without mold, rooms renovated since 1960, and adequate food access.
Gutting the existing students and faculty without those tangible investments into infrastructure is going to sink you because the existing kinship is what makes the crumbling infrastructure bearable. I hope it does sink you if this is what you’re set on.
Are you a student at NCF? If so, the (lack of) quality of the argumentation in the comment above suggests the problems there are dire.
I would rather be woke, intelligent, and patriotic than comatose, ignorant, and an anti-American TRAITOR like today's Republican Party.
Too bad the "woke" are neither intelligent nor patriotic.
No, that would be anti-American TRAITOR Republicans like you who are neither intelligent nor patriotic. You are ignorant, fascist, anti-American, anti-US Constitution, anti-Democracy, anti-freedom, seditious, criminal, tRump TRAITORS with absolutely no ability to reason, observe, or use logic. Absolutely ignorant and anti-American. Move to Russia where you belong.
Work on your trolling. Simply stacking every insult that comes to mind makes you sound like Regan MacNeil from the exorcist.
No, everything I said definitely applies to you and your ilk. If you think they are insults, then stop acting and believing the way you do because every statement is true.
How about you stop projecting your flaws onto everybody else. Look just because you and your ilk hate the country, hate the constitution (or rather believe it should be "interpreted" as a "living document" in ways that have nothing to do with the text), believe in letting criminals freely loot stores, riot, and burn down cities, and can't tell the difference between a man and a woman, doesn't mean everyone has these problems.
I don’t think it’s a problem to avoid being transphobic.
Don’t resort to name-calling. It feeds the fire. I am upset about this new agenda for my beloved alma mater and the fight isn’t over. But using this as a platform for playground-level taunts only foments extreme reactions from people like Eddie.
To reiterate, I feel your anger because it is also mine.
The problem is that Rob is still mentally in elementary school.
Does blatantly lying and making stuff up reflect well on the current state of your college?
Obviously false.
What's your take on the historical BS being promoted by the 1619 project?
Great, thanks for clarifying and sorry for misunderstanding. I guess all the posts about Bill Gates and globalism threw me off.
I happen to think the 1619 Project contains a lot of historical inaccuracies! Believe it or not NCF is not homogeneous!
Imagine wanting to be asleep instead of awakened. Conservatives really do worship stupidity and ignorance.
New College is the only school my senior wanted to go to and applied to attend. Now, with your crazy dogma and praying before meetings philosophy she isn't sure about her decision anymore. You and your supporters are making this small, inclusive, excellent College a place where students are scared because Proud Boys are there to terrorize them. Leave this school alone!
We will gladly take your daughter at U of Tampa or Rollins College, where science and critical thinking are paramount. We study all religions and the pros and cons of each. We respect all humans right to choose if they want to wear a mask or if they want to use pronouns. We don't judge them with silly words like woke. That's for the simple minded uneducated people afraid of the world around them changing. They seek to live in a 1950s whites only world where women like your daughter spent their time in the kitchen and making sure they had on make up when their husbands returned home from work,.
> where science and critical thinking are paramount.
So those universities embrace critical thinking.
> We don't judge them with silly words like woke.
However, they don't judge people for believing BS. A key component of science and critical thinking is being able to tell the true from the false, and that requires being "judgmental".
Look up "judgmental." Then look up "critical." See the difference?
Russel conjugation.
I'm a critical thinker.
You're judgmental.
Prove it. And don't forget to read the definitions.
You know, my comment above probably didn't go far enough. Some one who makes decisions on the basis of common sense is "judgmental".
A "critical thinker", in the sense the phrase is used in modern academia (as opposed to its common usage), is someone who argues via an appeal to nihilism that since language is ultimately a social construct, his thesis is just as good as any other.
Why, is she afraid that it'll be actually rigorous and require actual work rather than merely repeating the same woke platitudes?
spoken like someone who clearly has no concept of what New College is or is about
Exactly how will the work effort change when you have professors afraid of losing their job if they piss off the gestapo. Sounds like indoctrination to me. Anyone who disagrees is out.
> Exactly how will the work effort change when you have professors afraid of losing their job if they piss off the gestapo.
But enough about the current situation in academy, let's see how the new board can improve things.
FYI- being "woke" means being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination. She is very much WOKE and not ashamed of it. Your vision for the school is NOT the school she applied to attend. Having Proud Boys on campus is NOT a safe environment.
> Having Proud Boys on campus is NOT a safe environment.
I mean what if the students need to riot to stop Ann Coulter or some other conservative speaker from speaking on campus. How can the students do that with the Proud Boys on campus?
Being Woke means being a racist and judging people by their skin color instead of by their personality or soul. That's what we're up against-- woke is racism repackaged so that woke people can pat themselves on the back for their puerile racism.
You have no idea what you're talking about do you?
Clearly YOU have no idea. Have you ever taken a class at New College? Then STFU
That's a nice way of saying that you have no idea what you're talking about, but run your keyboard anyway.
As a proud NCF alum…thank you. This is not what I imagined when I graduated 10 years ago.
Please don't send your child there if you believe the Proud Boys or Vladimir Putin will terrorize him.
Free advice: Enroll in one of New College's writing courses before you continue to write these error-filled posts. Also, "Wokeness" is a set of fantastical beliefs concocted by right-wing extremists, so cross out all those proposals a.s.a.p. Finally, rather than prayer, maybe try a few moments of silence to be used for whatever purpose you need as individuals.
> Also, "Wokeness" is a set of fantastical beliefs concocted by right-wing extremists
And if one can't trust some rando on the internet over one's own lying eyes, who can one trust.
You might try ChatGPT to improve your convoluted sentence structure (cuz, rando, what you just said makes zero sense).
Well, the top comment on your link is by an Orthodox Jew. You're full of it aren't you.
Well, thanks for demonstrating the problem with New College by example.
What do you mean by that? Are you also anti-semetic?!?!
Oh he's a lot of hateful things.
That started from a misunderstanding about Eugine's Gab feed. It's been clarified since. We should move on, this is not productive.
The fact that he is mentioning the religion of the person Commenting IS a problem. I'm happy to share if clarified, but it sure looks anti-semetic to me. Since this is public I'm hoping all will see
Why do the board chair and president need to be removed? Can you point to a specific violation of trust? Or do you just wish to get rid of anyone who doesn’t agree with you?
I am only suggesting here that we have a discussion as a board to determine if they are the right people to lead the school now that the majority of the Board of Trustees is most likely planning on moving the college in a new direction.
A new direction? Are you all no longer planning to provide a high quality liberal arts education?
The new direction equals Floridas version of Liberty University or that fake Hillsdale school. The ones that think we shouldn't teach slavery or that the constitution specifically excluded women and blacks via a negotiated compromise. It was ok for women to never vote and they don't understand why women even "fought for such things".
There's a lot more to their "new direction" of whitewashing history and doing everything they can to not teach reality. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to tell you Christopher Columbus discovered America again. What a joke. Bye bye New College.
> Next thing you know, they'll be trying to tell you Christopher Columbus discovered America again.
Well he did. Who knows they might be teaching your kids that 2+2=4, black isn't white, and that a man isn't a woman.
Well, Columbus didn't. He stumbled on what he thought was the East Indies. It was the Bahamas. Oops. This was some five centuries after Lief Erickson had made his way to American shores, and some fifteen thousand years after the first historically-agreed-upon settlers of North America walked across what is now the Bering Strait.
Who knows, maybe New College will teach kids to use Google now that its decent teachers will be leaving the looming cesspool.
Refs: https://www.livescience.com/32430-who-discovered-america.html; https://www.voanews.com/a/who-discovered-america/3541542.html (VOA is a federal agency, so that might scare states' rights folks)
And Lief Erickson's discovery didn't spread and was forgotten after Vinland failed. Columbus is the one responsible for the enduring connection between the Old and New World.
"Florida" and "high quality education" aren't often used in the same sentence. There's a reason I burn resumes listing Florida institutions. I don't hire window lickers.
And yet many businesses are rushing to relocate to Florida and other red states. The ones that don't are probably not long for the world.
He is, providing a high quality liberal arts education is the new direction he's planning on moving the school.
I’m sure your intention was to be snarky, but this is a highly ranked school that draws, almost exclusively, students who have graduated in the top 10% of their high schools and produces leaders in virtually every field imaginable.
The new direction is a conservative school. Plenty of that around already!
Where by "plenty" you mean could be counted on one hand.
Michelle, there are not very many classical liberal arts schools in America at all-- but the ones there are have been getting more and more selective and have a giant surge in applicants. New College has been in danger of shutting down many times and does not have the level of interest that Hillsdale has. Hillsdale also has gender parity, whereas New College has been repelling males for decades.
Please be open minded and honest.
Good grief, where is your humility, man?
The former leadership of my university (not in Florida) fired a large number of employees and then rehired about half of them. Do you know how those remaining employees feel? Absolutely betrayed, nearly 3 years later. Will they go above the minimum required? Sure, some will. Because they care about the students and each other. But morale remains in the sub-basement. Many lower-level administrators are downright bitter and do as little as they can. So much for efficiencies.
Is that the legacy you want?
There are reasonable conversations one can have about dogmatism. It's not confined to the left, as your own words reveal.
But what you plan is a putsch, not a conversation. You are about to destroy this college, a little gem in Florida.
Is that the legacy you want? Right now, it's the legacy you're choosing.
Some how universities managed to function with an administration a fraction of the current size until the last few decades.
This is true! Unfortunately the people who got brutally reshuffled are the ones who do the real work - they'd have been called "secretaries" a few decades ago, although it's been longer than that since faculty got actual secretarial support. These are the people who process paperwork. They used to supervise work-study students, administer grants, etc. A lot of that now falls on faculty who were already stretched paper-thin.
We do have heaps of assistant provosts and "executive directors" of various internal offices, though. Who could've imagine we needed so many?
Sounds like the person doing the firing was some combination of incompetent, cowardly, or lacking in support from above. Useless "executive directors" and woke bureaucrats can scream remarkably loudly when their jobs are threatened, heck see many of the comments on this very substack.
Oh, there was support from above, all right. The orders came from the very top, or at least from the Provost's office. Incompetence and cowardice tends to increase more than you'd think as you go up the ladder. Higher-level administrators crow about being part of a "national market," insist on being paid in Appalachia as if they were paying Silicon Valley prices, and stay in the job for a couple of years before moving up and out. We've had at least a couple of "cabinet" appointments where the people hired were basically being driven out of town at knifepoint from their former positions. The past president was so disliked at his previous post that a random prof emailed me a rant - out of the blue - from the other side of the country after seeing me make some mild criticisms of the prez in our local alt-weekly; he must've set a Google alert. And I'm a nobody; I don't even have tenure!
This is satire, right?
Also, no one gives a single shit about when and where you personally pray. It's the making other people join and listen that infringes upon their rights. But, if you insist on making a spectacle of it, friendly reminder that JC wouldn't approve (Matthew 6:5, Luke 20:46-47).
Just sayin'.
For the record: Systemic racism is real. It may be hard for you to believe but that’s because you are a white heterosexual man.
So you are admitting you discriminate against white, heterosexual men? Good to know.
> Systemic racism is real.
I agree, for example look at affirmative action.