SARASOTA, Fla. — Thousands of books were dumped into the trash by the New College of Florida in Sarasota, including the library for the defunct Gender and Diversity Center inside the Hamilton building for student services.
That has some students outraged over why it would throw away books they say could have been donated, a move that is part of a year-long transformation for the small public college in Governor Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke.”
Last October, the school said it was getting rid of its gender studies department. Thursday, the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, or GDC, tossing decades of accumulated books.
Incoming senior Natalia Benavides couldn’t believe her eyes when stacks of books were tossed into a large dumpster outside NCF’s library.
“I saw that dumpster full of books from the library,” she says. “And I said, ‘This is horrendous.’ Plenty of people could re-home those books and take care of them, and they're just sitting there.”
New College says most of the books were from its library and were tossed because they are no longer serving the needs of the college, adding “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.”
Some of the books ended up at the Social Equity Through Education Alliance, known as SEE, which rushed to recover a few hundred books left on the ground.
“This is just a new low,” says SEE executive director Zander Moricz. “It also, beyond being evil, beyond being stupid, is wasteful and does not make sense.”
Benevides starts her senior year next week and thinks many students struggle with their studies as dramatic changes at the school continue.
“I think a lot of people really try to keep themselves numb so that they are not experiencing a lot of the grief and anger and frustration from the lack of communication, really,” she says.
When we asked the college why they didn’t donate the books, they told us they couldn’t because of state law but when you look up the code, it says donations can be made if the custodian of records gives written approval.
“The plan from here on out is to run a book drive out of SEE Space Sarasota for the next couple of weeks, so that every book we save can be read,” Moricz says. “The best way to respond to what is happening at the New College of Florida is by voting in the Aug. 20 school board elections. The wave of putting politics before students and education in Florida is not isolated. It is connected through secondary and post-secondary.”