SARASOTA, Fla. — Tensions among students at New College of Florida are continuing to mount against the school’s new board of trustees.

What You Need To Know

  • The new board of trustees at New College of Florida terminated the school's president, Pat Okker, during their meeting on Tuesday

  • The board's chair stepped down from her position following Okker's termination

  • Gov. DeSantis is hoping to revamp and reinvest in the school, appointing new board members and moving to a more classic curriculum

  • Students say they are concerned that their school won't be as accepting of who they are with these new changes coming

On Tuesday, the board terminated the college’s president and their chair step down from her position as Governor Ron DeSantis’ newly appointed board members look to make changes to help with things like decreased enrollment.

For students, like Alaska Miller, the campus just feels different.

“I've gone through a lot of emotions,” Miller said. “I've felt very angry and then those feelings proceeded to turn to sadness.”

Miller picked this school in Sarasota because it was an affordable place to get a good liberal arts education and a place where she could feel welcomed and accepted.

“I’m almost grieving for the school,” Miller said. “I feel like what’s happening is so awful.”

She was one of hundreds of students that were in this very same spot-on campus Tuesday. Only then, they held signs and chanted that the new direction of New College was not what the student body wanted.

That new direction is seemingly spearheaded by Gov. DeSantis’ newly appointed members to the college’s board of trustees who are looking to make major changes to the school.

“I can’t even,” Miller said. “I’m almost at a loss for words.”

Because some of those new changes, according to students like Alaska, have come swiftly and suddenly.

For example, near the end of Tuesday’s meeting, after she had given her presidential report, the board terminated Pat Okker as head of the college.

Following that, the board’s chair chose to step down from her position.

For parents like Shari Benedict, her daughter is a freshman and was surprised by how fast all these things are happening.

“She was really sad,” Benedict said. 

Benedict spoke out at that meeting on Tuesday and was one of several parents putting these signs up all over campus.

Despite the governor’s stance that with enrollment declining this new board and president will help recapture and reinvest in the school from its progressive mindset, Benedict is concerned about students like her daughter who chose this place for a reason.

“I think it's going to hamper a lot of these students that are coming out of here and it's going to hurt them,” Benedict said.

As for the board, they’ve already appointed a new chair and an interim president that will be in effect for a month until that person is replaced by former board of education commissioner Richard Corcoran.

Even with all this, students like Alaska say they plan to stay on campus and hope that they still will feel just as welcomed as they were when they first enrolled.

“I just hope that change will be slow,” she said.

Slow enough to where she can still earn a degree and feel like she still belongs.

Former President Okker called the changes decided on this week’s board meeting at New College as a hostile takeover while new board member Christopher Rufo said they’re following the mandate from the governor that change is necessary to improve the school of roughly 700 students.