With classes scheduled to start next week, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s reimagined New College of Florida has turned into a mismanaged mess after more than 40% of the faculty resigned in the previous months, CNN reports.
Fourth-year student Chai Leffler, an urban studies major, returned for the new year to find that most of the faculty who would have overseen his senior thesis had resigned. He now has to search for faculty from other disciplines to work with. “It’s a little messy, kind of like a dumpster fire right now in terms of administration,” Leffler said. “At the end of the day, I want to get my degree.”
New College was founded as a non-traditional center of higher education with a progressive policy about social issues like gender identification and race. Intending to punish the current population and turn the school into a conservative cultivation center, DeSantis removed the former board of directors and executives, replacing them with right-wing ideologues. This prompted many faculty to resign, fearing backlash in DeSantis’s totalitarian Florida for educating students in subject matter The State finds objectionable.