New College of Florida Board abolishes DEI bureaucracies

SARASOTA, Fla. (FLV) – The New College Board of Trustees voted to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies at a board meeting Tuesday.

The board passed a motion to eliminate the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, and authorize the interim president to make necessary or appropriate personnel decisions.

The office currently has four full time staff positions and three part-time student employees with a total budget of $442,227. Eliminating the office and transferring staff would result in an annual savings of more than $250,000, according to the draft policy.

A second motion passed to authorize the president to change the faculty handbook to “eliminate the request for a statement regarding the candidate’s contribution to, or approach to, achieving diversity.”

Board members said the president would have the authority to end mandatory diversity trainings, such as the “Workplace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Action training” for employees. In the proposed policy, campus police would no longer be required to complete a 14-hour training to obtain the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate.”

It would remove all diversity statement requirements from open faculty position postings.

New College of Florida is a top-ranked public liberal arts college that has around 700 students.

“New College of Florida has become the first university in the nation to abolish its DEI bureaucracy, ban coercive ‘diversity’ statements and programming, and prohibit identity-based preferences in hiring, admissions, and other procedures,” said newly-appointed member Christopher Rufo who proposed abolishing the bureaucracies in early February.

Gov. Ron DeSantis previously appointed new leadership at New College of Florida to overhaul the institution’s “equity” ideology for a merit-based approach.

The fourth proposal is to end identity-based preferences. The proposed policy said admissions staff reviewed the application process and essay rubric to ensure they do not result in any identity-based preferences.

The policy said the human resources staff reviewed position advertisements to determine if they implied identity-based preferences. Based on that review, the equal opportunity section was updated. New College does not have identity-based quotas for employment.

Many spoke out against frustrations against the board and planned policies at the beginning of the meeting.

“This is not a very impressive DEI bureaucracy,” said Trustee Grace Keenan, who is the student body president.

Keenan said one-fourth of one office on campus has a position related to DEI and there is almost no mandatory DEI on campus. She pointed out that the only recently added DEI statement to the faculty is the only DEI statements that are required and there are no identity based quotas.

“Then there should be very little resistance to eliminating it,” said Rufo.

“Can you clarify what the issue is with DEI, just so we can kind of inform our decision on this motion?” Keenan asked Rufo.

“For those who are concerned about disruption, this is really not as great of a disruption as even maybe I would have predicted. But, these are decisions based on principle. And I think the board has a mandate from the people of Florida, who have appointed us through their elected representatives, to make sure that we are embodying the most important principles, and DEI goes against those principles,” Rufo explained.

Rufo said DEI restricts academic freedom, degrades the rigor of scholarship, treats people differently on the basis of their skin color or other inborn identities, and restricts open and civil debate on campuses.

“So, I think it’s important, even if though these changes are not as great as at something like University of Florida, or a larger public institution, they are essential to say that we are taking this mandate seriously, we are going to put these principles into action,” Rufo said.

During the meeting, interim New College President Richard Corcoran outlined his goals going forward.

Corcoran said he wants to increase student recruitment. He listed goals such as recruiting replacements for professors who have retired, review classes that are offered, improve facilities on campus, and possibly adding additional extracurricular activities.

Corcoran said he will go to Tallahassee for the opening week of the legislative session and hopes to set a record for the amount of funding that they will secure from the state.

“And that funding will put us on that path to making those necessary improvements, not just with facilities, but additional student life activities, and obviously, improving food situation, all those things that you’ve heard about. And I think that we’re going to be successful in doing that,” he said.

The board voted to approve the College’s 2022-23 Revised Operating Budget.

Rufo said there has been a lot of media reports that New College is “in a worse position than before.” He asked Vice President of Finance and Administration Chris Kinsley to clarify.

“Of course, now we have a budget of $66.1 million. That will be certainly helpful. As a CFO, that’s very helpful, and very good, and I think that’s wonderful news,” said Kinsley.

The new budget includes $15 million approved by the Legislative Budget Commission that will be used for hiring faculty, offering student scholarships, and covering additional operational costs “necessary to transition into a world-class classical liberal arts educational institution.”

Previously, DeSantis said he expects to see “positive results very quickly” after New College of Florida received additional funding for recruitment.

“I think the more we’re centering higher education on integrity of the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves, not trying to impose an orthodoxy, you are going to see people flooding into these institutions,” DeSantis said in January.