New College in Sarasota is the state college that used to be progressive. Then Governor DeSantis filled its board with rightwing cronies with the goal of turning it into the Hillsdale of the South. To change the culture, the politician who became its president has been recruiting athletes. They are not the type to want to major in gender studies.
Now, Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell reports, New College wants $400 million to grow. That’s a lot of money for a small college. The Florida press will have to keep watch on where the money goes.
Maxwell writes:
Today we’re catching up on controversy at New College, revisiting one of Central Florida’s stranger environmental debates and bidding adieu to one of Florida’s funniest novelists.
We start with what increasingly looks like the biggest public money-grab in Florida — the orgy of incestuous spending at New College of Florida.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ trustees at this school already generated national controversy when they hired former House Speaker Richard Corcoran, a guy with no higher ed experience, as the school’s president and hiked his compensation package to up to $1.3 million a year — all to run a school that says it has fewer students (698) than many elementary schools. (Seriously, Apopka Elementary has more than 800.)
But now New College wants more money — a lot more.
The Sarasota Herald Tribune recently reported that its tiny hometown college has requested a “minimum” of $400 million in additional public money to spend over the next five years and increase enrollment by a few hundred students.
Even if the school grew to 1,200 students, you’d be talking about $333,000 per student. For that price, we could practically buy every student their own school. Or at least a classroom.
If only Florida’s political policymakers were as eager to fund public education when their buddies aren’t involved.
Given the cronyism at play — New College also hired a former senate president as its general counsel and the wife of a former GOP party chair as a fundraiser — there will be a lot of people watching to see who gets the contracts dished out when the new largesse is spent.
Then there’s the lawyer
Speaking of New College’s general counsel, that’s former Senate President Bill Galvano, who generously offered to serve the school and President Corcoran “at a reduced rate of $500 per hour.”
Well, keen Orlando Sentinel readers noticed that Galvano’s name also popped up in other stories the Sentinel has written about a lawsuit filed by a GOP Senate candidate from Lake County who claims former party officials conspired to sabotage her campaign in favor of another Republican candidate.
Corcoran has been subpoenaed in that case. And Galvano is representing him — meaning the school’s president is now using the school’s attorney for personal legal needs. How convenient.
Galvano said in an email last week that Corcoran is paying his legal fees but wouldn’t say if Corcoran is getting a discounted rate or answer questions about whether the school’s trustees approved the overlapping representation, saying he considered those details “confidential attorney/client information that I do not disclose.”
Theoretically, it’s up to the trustees to ask probing questions about all that and share the details with taxpayers to instill public confidence. Also theoretically, I could enter and win a bikini pageant.
“New College in Sarasota is the state college that used to be progressive.”
You obviously approved of that ideological slant. How about colleges being places of genuine inquiry, not indoctrination centers for the Left or the Right, where no one is coerced to conform to any type of party line?
How do you feel about New College being converted into a rightwing indoctrination center?
“Today we’re catching up on controversy at New College, revisiting one of Central Florida’s stranger environmental debates and bidding adieu to one of Florida’s funniest novelists.”
Tim Dorsey was a hilarious chronicler of Flor-uh-duh weirdness via a series of novels featuring a character named Serge Storm who travels around the Sunshine State, just ahead of the law, killing people who richly deserve it–you know, like Dexter in Bermuda shorts and a Cuban shirt. If you are like me, you will or do read one of his episodic, road-trip novels in one or two sittings because they are so freaking funny and are almost impossible to put down. There is little of the vast landscape of Flor-uh-duh weirdness that Dorsey didn’t capture. If you don’t know him, treat yourself. What a hoot. A list of his titles gives you an indication of the content:
Dorsey’s books:
Atomic Lobster
Cadillac Beach
Clownfish Blues
Coconut Cowboy
Electric Barracuda
Florida Roadkill
Gator A-Go-Go
Hammerhead Ranch Motel
Hurricane Punch
Mermaid Confidential
Naked Came the Florida Man
No Sunscreen for the Dead
Nuclear Jellyfish
Orange Crush
Pineapple Grenade
Shark Skin Suite
The Big Bamboo
The Maltese Iguana
The Pope of Palm Beach’
The Riptide Ultra-Glide
The Stingray Shuffle
Tiger Shrimp Tango
Torpedo Juice
Triggerfish twist
Tropic of Stupid
When Elves Attack
I’ve read several of these, Bob. They’re good, but I confess that I prefer Carl Hiassen for this sort of thing.
I am also a huge fan of Carl Hiassen.
Mark – and let’s not forget Hiaasen’s literary godfather, Elmore Leonard!
Gold Coast, Split Images, LaBrava, Cat Chaser, Out of Sight, Stick, Maximum Bob, Riding the Rap, Get Shorty, Rum Punch– his “Florida Man” novels.
Definitely. Read them all. If you’ve read these books, than you’ve encountered one of Elmore Leonard’s funniest creations, the Crowe family: Elvin, Roland, and Dale Crowe, Jr. Have you watched “Justified”? I hadn’t realized that like the Roosevelts with the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park branches of their family, the Crowes have the South Florida and Harlan County, Kentucky branches.
You left out Dewey Crowe.
I did–and his father, Purvis. They’re the Harlan County branch of this distinguished American family.
Bob,
What’s the best book to start a Dorsey read?
Hmmm. It’s been a while. I would say Hurricane Punch.
Healthy swamps are the most important part of the disappearing ecosystem that used to make Florida into an ectopian place. Now these wonders are being replaced by murky political figures in concrete places. Chisel up the concrete
ectopian
Is that a portmanteau of ecologically utopian? Did you coin it? The word is new to me. I love it.
However, since the prefix ec- typically means “without” or “from,” I think that ecotopia would probably be better.
Bob: ectopia was the proper name Joel Garreau gave to the part of North America extending from Northern California up into British Columbia in The Nine Nations of North America, a book published in the early 1980s. Not sure where he got it.
Tangential idea: how in God’s green earth does your mind remember trivial things from a long time past, then forget the sea salt (which I did this morning). Figure that out and I will let you use the words measure and intelligence in the same sentence.
Thanks, Roy! That’s fascinating. And good Lord, that is a beautiful part of the country.
What did I forget the sea salt in, Roy? (I go through a LOT of salt, lol. Not like me to forget it.)
Lately I discover myself in the kitchen or living room asking myself what it was that brought me there to begin with. Literally, I freaking forget why I was going there by the time I get there. This gives me pause when I consider the age of some of our political candidates.
The hogs are feeding.
nailed it
In November of 2001, the mayor of Inglis, Flor-uh-duh, signed a proclamation banning Satan from the town. So, Satan had to move, set up shop in Tallahassee, and add an Italian-sounding prefix to his name.
America has an insecure men problem. Deeply insecure men compensate for their shortcomings (sometimes literal “short” comings) by seeking power and the adulation of followers. And that causes them to gravitate toward politics, where they spend their adult lives in a macho swagger, acting out vindictively against “the other” (anything and anyone not like them) and attacking anyone too defenseless to fight back (poor people, children, the elderly, the infirm, women without power, immigrants, foreigners, people with differing religious beliefs). Sometimes, as with Trump, how the politician got to be that way is clear enough. Trump had a father whom he could never please, never be good enough for, one who physically abused him and verbally denigrated him again and again. And this made him the monster of malignant narcissism and moral blindness that he is today. At other times, the early dysfunction isn’t widely understood. But it’s doubtless there. One wonders . . .
And shockingly, horrifically, large numbers of Americans find that very swagger and vindictiveness and hatefulness resulting from the early dysfunction appealing. It’s macho. It’s “leadership.” It’s being tough, being a man’s man.
Uh, no. It’s being an angry, wounded, insecure but spoiled toddler who hasn’t gotten his way.
I graduated from New College in 1995, back in its progressive heyday. It was a glorious experiment that I wish had survived.