SARASOTA, Fla. — A bill threatening the continued existence of New College is hanging like a dark cloud over the institution.
“This legislation has worried students and has put our future on hold,” Steven Keshishian said.
Keshishian is the student government president of New College and a third-year student. He moved to America for New College.
“I was a student in Lebanon and I could’ve gone anywhere in Lebanon, but I chose to come to this small liberal arts college, that I felt believed in me and believed in the things I wanted to pursue,” Keshishian said.
He says it might sound cheesy, but he believes New College changed him and made him the person he is today.
“I’m proud to be a part of this college,” Keshishian said. “We are changing lives one by one and without independence, I don’t think we could do that.”
President Donal O'Shea took the fight to Tallahassee on Wednesday. O’Shea is urging lawmakers to reconsider the proposal to turn New College into a Florida State University campus and Florida Polytechnic into a University of Florida campus.
Students plan to fight the bill with O’Shea and make their voices heard today at a student planned rally.
On the Facebook event page created by student Alex Barbat, she wrote, “We called on the Education Committee to stop the NCF/FSU merger and although they heard us, they chose not to listen.”
“So, we are going to be even louder this time, by participating in a campus-wide rally," she said.
The “Save our School” rally at the ACE Plaza on campus was filled with support.
“It is so affirming, it’s wonderful and it’s so touching,” O’Shea said. “It does testify to the enormous power of this institution and the affection for which people feel for it.”
New College’s president and chairman of the Board of Trustees joined students and alums in unity.
“They know I am on their side and the institution is on their side,” O’Shea said.
President O’Shea told 10News he met with the Chamber of Commerce right before the rally and received unanimous support to keep New College independent from FSU.
“The economic impact of New College and the nearby colleges for which we collaborate intensely is huge in this community and that’s one of the reasons to have an independent New College,” O’Shea said.
“Is it tough to collaborate with somebody’s who’s boss is 350 miles away.”
Current and former students carried signs demanding their school be left as it is. Many students say this merger would affect them tremendously.
“I wouldn’t be able to afford to go anywhere else in the United States,” said. “New College has been a home for me, they’ve offered me resources when things back home have been unstable, and they’ve looked out for every student as an individual.”
“Students like me, we didn’t come here to go to FSU, we did not come here to go to schools like UF,” Daria Paulis said. “We came here because of the unique opportunities we can get at this Institution.
Daria is one of many students concerned over what a merge with FSU would look like.
“We don’t know if the school would end up being shut down, if we will be allowed to stay here,” she said. “It would definitely change what our degree means to us. Would we still have liberal arts degrees?”
“We don’t know if our grading system, that is one of the biggest reasons like students like me come here would be kept intact or if that would change,” Daria said. “It would mean adjusting our academic curriculum, adjusting basically everything we know and love about New College.”
President O’Shea says he doesn’t know what a merger would look like either. He says he understand the cost to the state of New College education is more than the average at other schools. But, he says how can you put a price on such a unique and diverse system.
“I don’t want to use pejorative terms, but it is really poorly thought out and it may have very serious consequences and unintended consequences,” O’Shea said.
One by one, students took the microphone and expressed their feelings to the crowd.
“Cost per degree, first of all, is not the correct way to understand how this college’s financial situation works,” Alex Barbat said to a crowd of people. “And it’s also not how you determine the value of education.”
The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Randy Fine, says the merge needs to be done to cut administrative costs that are too high. Fine says a lot of money can be saved by merging the schools, but O’Shea says that’s not true.
“I wish I could have tested some of those numbers Fine used because they used appropriations from a different year than they used students in,” O’Shea said.
“They also took the total education in general expenditure and divided by the number of degrees but, if you’re like University of Florida where a third of the degrees are your master’s degrees that hugely understates the costs,” he said.
O’Shea says by rolling in with FSU he sees nine jobs that would be cut to the tune of $700,000 but says it would cost one to two million dollars to merge schools.
Fine says the lack of growth is another concern and reason behind the bill. He says enrollment numbers aren’t where they need to be.
“We have tried to help New College grow,” Fine said. “In fact, the legislature has funded over $10 million of member projects whose goal it was to help New College get bigger.”
Fine said their efforts didn’t work. He said the enrollment at New College continued to decline, but O’Shea says differently.
New College has 724 students and O’Shea says admissions are rising. O’Shea says they are even on track for dropping costs in half by doubling enrollment.
New College wants to have 1,200 students by 2024-2025.
Their plan to do this has many parts. First, they’ve already made strides to engage in more comprehensive marketing efforts online to prospective students. They’ve even launched their own admissions application so students can apply directly to New College and not just through the Common App.
O’Shea says New College has also boosted on-campus co-curricular activities for students and created a First Year Seminar program for incoming students to help ease the transition to college.
“As a result of these initial efforts, we have seen a 30-percent increase in applications and have increased our first-year-to-second-year retention rate from 76-percent to 85-percent in one year,” New College told 10News.
O’Shea says this merger is far from a done deal and students aren’t giving up the fight.
“I am so proud to continue fighting for what is right,” one alum shouted to students and faculty at the rally.
“My mom would tell me, you don’t go into other people’s houses and tell them how to clean their kitchen, so with all due respect, Representative Fine get out of our house!”
Students plan to board a bus and head to Tallahassee on Tuesday, February 25.
“We are going to go to the committee,” Keshishian said. “We are going to show them what it means to be a New College student.”
“I encourage each and every one of you to get on that bus on Tuesday, take this fight to their house and show them what we are capable of because we are small, but we are mighty,” the alum said.
Florida Polytechnic leaders from the Student Government Association and university's president will also join New College students in Tallahassee to express their opposition to the bill. That's when it will be heard in the House appropriations committee.
Those not going are planning a rally that same Tuesday on campus from noon to 1:00 p.m at Florida Poly.
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