\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>n a Tuesday night, at Florida\u2019s only public liberal arts college, <\/strong>a small group of students gathered in a classroom to discuss issues deemed \u201ccontroversial\u201d on state campuses: transgender rights, feminism, immigration. But perhaps what they wanted to address most was how to combat despair.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to stand and resist,\u201d said Nya Jacobson, a New College of Florida senior. \u201cBut this place is a lost cause.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of a broader push of anti-LGBTQ legislation in 2023, Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s governor, forced a big conservative shift at New College, considered the state university system\u2019s queerest campus. His newly appointed school board of trustees ousted the college\u2019s female president and multiple LGBTQ+ staffers, and voted to end its gender studies department, creating a mass exodus of students and faculty. In the three years since, the culture change has solidified, resulting in a more reserved, atomized student body and a new roster of conservative professors.<\/p>\n On this February evening, though, Lux, a socialist feminist magazine, was hosting a discussion to remind students that not all hope is lost. With speakers from activist organisations like 50501, one of the groups behind the No Kings protests, Lux Magazine is on a multi-city college tour in states with academic bans around race, gender and sexuality and restrictions around bodily autonomy. The magazine wants to show Black, brown, queer, feminist and trans students that they still have a safe space on campuses, and adults have their backs.<\/p>\n <\/span>Leonard leads a discussion while students ask questions at New College of Florida on 17 February.<\/span><\/p>\n Even Jacobson, who felt defeated after years of pushing back against the school administration, was reminded of all that\u2019s still left to fight for.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really helpful to talk to organizers and be like, \u2018Wow, people are doing things,\u2019\u201d said Jacobson. \u201cAll you hear is bad news, so it\u2019s like, damn, there are people out here fighting for us, and they live right here.\u201d<\/p>\n W<\/span>hat\u2019s happening at New College is not an anomaly: the school is just one of 445 campuses across 48 states and DC that have changed their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies or academics in response to state legislation in the past three years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. In states like Iowa and Texas \u2013 other stops on Lux\u2019s campus tour \u2013 schools have similarly experienced the installation of political appointees into college administration, followed by academic bans, restrictions on student social life and a purge of anything associated with \u201cdiversity\u201d. But at the tiny, once quirky New College in Sarasota, the shift in value systems, practically overnight, hit especially hard.<\/p>\n Jacobson, the president of New College\u2019s LGBTQ+ club, is struggling to find another student to take over the club once they graduate. The school mascot, once the \u201cnull set\u201d, a pair of closed brackets with a space in the middle, is now the Mighty Banyans, illustrated with an uncannily macho tree named Rooty. Once a school where students organized a tree-saving protest named after a Dr Seuss character, the college is now investing scholarship money into recruiting student athletes, demolishing trees for a new baseball field.<\/p>\n <\/span>Nya Jacobson, president of the LGBTQ+ student club, Queery, at New College of Florida in February.<\/span><\/p>\n The conservative takeover of New College began less than a year after DeSantis signed the \u201cdon\u2019t say gay\u201d bill into law in 2022, barring discussion of LGBTQ+ topics in primary education. One of the six conservative trustees DeSantis appointed was Heritage Foundation fellow Christopher Rufo, best known as the architect of the manufactured backlash to critical race theory. The new school president was DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran, who had no prior experience in higher education. On top of disbanding the gender studies department, the board announced its intentions to de-\u201cfeminize\u201d the student body, which, like higher education itself, skewed majority women. When the new administration drove up student enrollment for the fall 2023 semester by recruiting male athletes, it tanked the school\u2019s average GPA scores for the 2023 incoming freshman class.<\/p>\n Students and professors at New College tried to fight the changes, but many were pushed out. In the fall of 2023, more than 100 students, roughly an eighth of the student body, transferred to another school. Forty per cent of the school\u2019s professors also left before the fall semester; those who came in their stead included a \u201cpresidential scholar in residence\u201d who once wrote a paper called The Case for Colonialism.<\/p>\n <\/span>New College of Florida\u2019s college hall and admissions welcome center in February.<\/span><\/p>\n Students who stayed, like Jacobson, faced finishing their degrees with few to zero professors in their department. Still, Jacobson didn\u2019t blame the new students, many of whom, they suspected, didn\u2019t know what happened and \u201care getting screwed over in a different way\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople often paint them as part of the problem,\u201d Jacobson said of the new students. \u201cBut it\u2019s like, no, the problem is people are trying to get an education, and it\u2019s really hard to do that here.\u201d<\/p>\n L<\/span>ux\u2019s New College event was a much different vibe from its stops at Florida International University in Miami and the University of Central Florida a week earlier. For those conversations, students came prepared with their own campaigns and strategies \u2013 around ICE, the cost of housing. At New College, students were so beaten down that one was unsure if protesting was legal.<\/p>\n Sarah Leonard, Lux\u2019s editor-in-chief, understood that the mood at New College was likely going to be more deflated than at other schools. In the five years since Lux\u2019s launch, the magazine has covered attacks on higher education.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that while some of these issues were being covered in the media, often student voices were not at the center of those stories,\u201d Leonard said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Lux Magazine\u2019s editor-in-chief, Sarah Leonard. <\/span><\/p>\n Lux\u2019s campus tour is part of its efforts to continue the feminist tradition of bringing people together to strategize and organize. Probably the most recognized name in college tours in recent years is Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA CEO who was killed in September. Kirk became famous for his consistent presence on campuses, where he often countered progressive arguments with bigoted rhetoric. His engagement with young men \u2013 on campus and online \u2013 is also often credited with handing Trump the 2024 election. The Lux tour flips Kirk\u2019s \u201cdebate me\u201d campus approach to create a space for students \u2013 queer, marginalized and otherwise \u2013 to talk about what matters to them.<\/p>\n Lane Hagan, a New College junior, opened up about having a professor who made offensive comments about race, gender and sexuality during class, antagonizing students with the sort of \u201cblue hair and pronouns\u201d jokes about liberals invoked on Fox News.<\/p>\n Hagan\u2019s mother went to New College and told them, \u201c\u2018You\u2019re gonna finally have this community,\u2019\u201d said Hagan, who grew up in a rural, conservative Florida town. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re gonna have these professors that are gonna have these amazing ideas\u2019 \u2026 and I was really excited for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Hagan continued: \u201cI kind of expected to come here and get even more gay looking, and to express myself even more. I feel like it\u2019s gone in the other direction.\u201d After hearing the professor\u2019s jokes, Hagan said they stopped dyeing their hair, which they had been doing since they were 12.<\/p>\n Given the school\u2019s climate, students told the Lux team they didn\u2019t know how to begin organizing when they also didn\u2019t know where they were safe to talk about organizing.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents are scared to get involved, to invite groups like us,\u201d said Noella Williams, Lux\u2019s campus tour organizer. \u201cWe\u2019re just a magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>A student flips through an edition of Lux Magazine before a panel discussion at New College of Florida on 17 February.<\/span> Photograph: Megan May\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Williams, 27, was a student organizer before she graduated from Florida A&M University (FAMU), the state\u2019s only public historically Black college that recently announced it was \u201cconsolidating\u201d its African American studies program. Now working at Lux Magazine, Williams feels the pain of the students she meets. She called the experience of being an organizer on an HBCU campus in Florida \u201cisolating\u201d.<\/p>\n Williams said: \u201cI feel really grateful that students can talk to me and ask questions because I didn\u2019t really have something like this when I went to FAMU.\u201d<\/p>\n At the event, speakers like Jules Rayne of Equality Florida, the only statewide trans organizer, and Sarah Parker, with the advocacy group Voices of Florida and a national coordinator for the 50501 movement, also provided local, supportive, adult voices that students could connect with in the future.<\/p>\n Rayne said: \u201cIf you all want to protest here at New College, we will join you, and we\u2019re going to loop in every other org about a protest.\u201d<\/p>\n Rayne also mentioned that though the losses seem constant, there were also wins: \u201cLast year, we defeated every anti-LGBTQ+ bill in the state of Florida,\u201d Rayne said to students\u2019 cheers.<\/p>\n While graduating students like Jacobson say their fight for their school is over, new ones are still arriving, not yet embittered and full of conviction. Luci Pimienta, who had only been on campus for a few weeks, was doggedly recruiting at the event to start a progressive club. Organizers on the panel told her they would happily help her find a space for it if the campus wouldn\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s building power,\u201d Parker said. \u201cI always say, each one of you has a friend. They have a friend. We all have to lock arms and do this together.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Noella Williams, the Lux Magazine college tour coordinator, at New College of Florida.<\/span> Photograph: Megan May\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At the end of the night, some students peeled off to do homework, while others stuck around to chat. The Lux campus tour continued on to the University of Iowa, where more than 80 students showed up at the two-day event, fired up about what to do over their recently shuttered gender studies program.<\/p>\n While the magazine doesn\u2019t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges facing marginalized groups in higher education, the Lux team believes that students can find a way forward with a supportive, safe environment \u2013 even if it\u2019s just for a few hours.<\/p>\n Hagan said: \u201cI don\u2019t know if there\u2019s anyone who\u2019s speaking to us other than a panel like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a Tuesday night, at Florida\u2019s only public liberal arts college, a small group of students gathered in a classroom to discuss issues deemed \u201ccontroversial\u201d on state campuses: transgender rights, feminism, immigration. But perhaps what they wanted to address most was how to combat despair. \u201cIt\u2019s important to stand and resist,\u201d said Nya Jacobson, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[4320,7176,562,2274,3819,3649,825,23879,6142,150,18272,7535],"class_list":{"0":"post-47043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-campus","9":"tag-charlie","10":"tag-cuts","11":"tag-dei","12":"tag-feminist","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-gay","15":"tag-kirkstyle","16":"tag-magazine","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-reclaims","19":"tag-tours"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}