Photo courtesy Ne College Facebook page.

When students return to New College of Florida for fall classes Monday, a new reality months in the making will arrive in earnest. A record number of freshman enrolled at the university will start on their college journey, and many will return cautious about the new environment.

The Sarasota institution landed in the spotlight early this year when Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a number of new trustees who abruptly fired existing administration and picked Richard Corcoran, an ally of the Governor, as interim president. 

SRQ sat down for a feature interview with Corcoran the day of his first trustee meeting. At the time, he promised to deliver a future that would, eventually, be embraced by all. “We’ll get to a point where some of our harshest critics will say that this was a great moment for New College,” he said.

To date, criticism hardly waned. Honestly, the governor is a big reason. As he campaigns for president, he has boasted to conservative audiences about the takeover of the famously left-leaning school. At an Orlando convention, he disparaged the locally loved college, saying “not a lot of people in Florida knew much about it. It was almost like a commune.” Out of state, he told a Hillsdale College audience the school historically was “performing very poorly.”

The new administration hasn’t been so dismissive about the school’s rich history. Ryan Terry, communications vice president, touts successes like the 56 Fulbright Scholar Awards earned in the last 15 years, a sign some smart folk managed to hear about Florida’s honors college. 

Still, it’s been a rocky ride. Corcoran controversially denied tenure to nearly a half dozen professors shortly after he arrived at the school. New College decided not to renew a contract for visiting professor Erik Wallenberg, creating a public fight this summer about academic freedom.  Many students transferred to other institutions rather than see what comes next at New College, and many faculty have moved on as well.

Meanwhile, the state has pumped millions to college, for scholarship and long-neglected maintenance. One can’t help but think this will worsen the maligned per-student costs of New College, but it will fix problems that persisted too long.

In one sense, this created a path for change to happen faster than the optimists or cynics believed it would. in a column in this publication, Corcoran announced a number of faculty hires from other liberal arts institutions. Those include: Joseph Locante, a scholar on John Locke’s work regularly featured on NPR; Stanley Fish, a free speech expert and sometimes-critic of Donald Trump; and Andrew Doyle, a podcaster who describes himself as left-wing but has also criticized identity politics.

The new hires are prestigious, as are some of the administration level people he invited to the fold. And while Corcoran was greeted by students as a “fascist,” the thread in hires has, if anything, shown a commitment to free expression.

Still, just this week, students voiced frustration campus ambassadors will be forbidden from wearing pins with political messages. Corcoran also happily stood alongside the Governor at a boastful press conference this year, where DeSantis signed legislation dismantling diversity programs at all Florida colleges. New College led the way in enacting that. 

But regardless of what anyone thinks of the power players, I still feel the soul of New College lays not in policies but with students. It’s up to those enrolled to determine the culture and future, and as future alumni, they will have a voice on the matter long after trustees, administrators, faculty or even outside pundits leave campus or lose interest. The value of a New College experience and the brightness of their own future will be set by students themselves.

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor for SRQ MEDIA.

Photo courtesy Ne College Facebook page.