SEE Alliance
(TALLAHASSEE, FL) – New College of Florida is under fire after hundreds of books were apparently deleted from its collection and thrown into the street.
The Social Equity Through Education Alliance (SEE), a local activist group, was alerted on Thursday by a New College student who reported seeing what he believed to be “thousands” of books “stuffed into a dumpster” behind the college’s library.
“We essentially tried to convey to the officials that there were nonprofit educational institutions and shelters that were immediately ready to truck in and rescue all the books … and the officials refused,” said Zander Moricz, executive director of SEE.
Moricz continued, “There were Bibles, there were stories by Black authors, by Latinx authors, stories by women, there were LGBTQ+ and queer stories or trans stories, all thrown in a dumpster. It sends the message that New College of Florida wants to send stories about gender and diversity to the dumpster, and it was so heartbreaking and also very frustrating.”
In a statement to ABC News, a New College spokesperson said they were following “long-established annual collection clean-out procedures, which include removing materials that are old, damaged, or otherwise no longer meet the needs of the college.”
“The images of a dumpster filled with library materials seen online are related to routine cleanouts,” the statement said. “Chapter 273 of Florida law prohibits New College from selling, donating or redistributing these materials purchased with state funds. Discarded materials will be subjected to a recycling process whenever possible.”
Some of the books found on the street were related to the school’s discontinued gender studies program and were primarily donated and were not part of any official college collection or inventory, New College’s statement said. When the books were not picked up for pickup from the program’s former space, the college left them on the street as well, the college told ABC News.
New College, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, has been targeted by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-woke policies, which DeSantis has said he hopes to shed the college’s liberal reputation.
DeSantis reformed the Board of Trustees, advocating for the “replacement of radical left-wing faculty members with new professors who are consistent with the university’s mission.” However, in recent years there have been numerous layoffs and the elimination of positions that meet diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) standards.
“The New College Board of Trustees is succeeding in its mission to eliminate indoctrination and reorient higher education toward its classical mission,” DeSantis said in an August 2023 statement.
According to a New College spokesman, some of the books that were discarded came from the school’s gender studies program, which was shut down at the behest of the DeSantis-appointed board of trustees.
Florida authorities have long been under scrutiny for restrictions and bans on books in the state, as part of legislation that seeks to restrict certain topics related to race, gender, sex and more in higher education and schools.
The Parental Rights in Education Act and the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act would restrict content about LGBTQ identities and race in schools, respectively.
Florida law also allows parents and residents to object to books and have them reviewed and possibly removed from school.
Since the implementation of these laws, Florida has seen an increase in attempts to ban books across the state, according to the American Library Association (ALA) and free speech advocacy group PEN America.
In the first semester of the 2023-2024 school year alone, Florida had the highest number of cases involving banning materials, with 3,135 attempts in 11 school districts, according to PEN America.
Critics – including parents, students and local activists – instead launched campaigns against banned books to encourage the reading and distribution of the books in question.
Later in April, DeSantis signed a bill that he hoped would limit the number of book objections from people whose children do not have access to school supplies.
Parents of children in the school districts or who use district materials may continue to object to an unlimited amount of materials.
DeSantis’ office said changing these policies “protects schools from activists seeking to politicize and disrupt a district’s book review process.”
Moricz and other activists were able to take several books with them in the end: “These were readable books. They were books that had no tears in the pages. They had clean covers. These are books that could have been used, and that is really unforgivable.”
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