Accountability 2: Board of Governors

Good morning Mr. Chair, members of the Board.I’m here because I’ve been deeply interested College governance, since 20 years ago as a New College student I saw the first group of trustees build the independent New College -- great Floridians like the first Board chair, former republican senator Bob Johnson and legendary foundation president Lt. General Rolland Heiser. I was an intern for Congresswoman Kathrine Harris of Sarasota, a supporter of the school.

When new trustees were appointed in January, I spoke positively towards them and their proposals. This isn’t about if New College could improve, we all know that. We’re here to talk about what Richard Corcoran has done over the past 10 months.

Richard Corcoran didn’t shake the hands of the graduates at the commencement ceremony. Corcoran fired the dean of the library three weeks before the end of the semester.

He has told you students left for ideological reasons, Corcoran doesn’t mention took away their on-campus housing assignments over the summer, and returning students learned two weeks before their semester would they would have to live 4 miles off campus in quote “vibrant downtown Sarasota”.

I’ve put in a public records request for any message over the summer that welcome students back or tries to reassure them.

I can also add on faculty, Corcoran drove away the head of the Data Science program, an alum who personally worked with Steve Jobs in the 1990s and was part of the group of 200 people who returned to Apple with Jobs in 1996.

In my last in person comment I told you he’d been dishonest with this board. I can add, he lied to you yesterday. He said that the accountability plan is exactly the same as june, that’s false, compared to June the revised plan lowered the graduation rate from 68% to 50% for the class in 2027-- the graduating class of ‘27 is the entering class of ‘23 class he recruited.

I already told you over zoom he got that enrollment by sending a men’s soccer coach in July to Mexico and other countries to recruit soccer players, -- do you think Mexico has a pool of speak English well enough to do college-level work. Not just the cost to get them but the metrics.

There’s no reason to think that by 2028 that he’ll improve retention, why would parents who would send their kids to Hillsdale want to send their kids to a college where the Dean of Students is a former lobbyist? Cronyism and self-dealing

I’m not going to ask you to overturn the apple cart and reject Corcoran, but he wants credit for boosting enrollment through athletics when his plan was to use E&G fund.

When it comes up, I ask that you motion to table Richard Corcoran’s confirmation until he shows he has a plan for the college to pay for what he wants to collect a salary for accomplishing. Both inputs and outputs. Not to reopen the search, just to table, and he remains interim president.

If you demonstrate this board will approve over a million dollars in salary for making changes with no plan to pay for changes, you’ll turn the SUS into the legislature pension plan. That’s not how to be stewards of the investment in money and time of past generations of great Flordians who built our State University System, including building New College.

August 10, 2023: Quagmire

My name is Mike Sanderson, I entered New College in 1999.

I asked to comment on the, quote, business plan, because I was there in Tampa at the Board of Governors — the BoG — when they asked for it.

Richard Corcoran’s rambling confession that prompted that was really something and I submit that transcript for this meeting’s record.

I just got this business plan: Let me tell you something.

Bob Allen sold you a bill of goods. He told you this was going to be easy. He told you this was going to be a cakewalk.

Alums know 2023 was preceded by years of vitriolic Facebook arguments — but now it’s your reputations, and your movement’s reputation under threat.

At some point this board, the board of governors, the governor, are going to have to realize: New College is not the people who argued with Bob Allen on Facebook

To make a very Florida phrasing, Bob Allen led the BoG into a quagmire. See you at The Swamp.

July 6, 2023: Auditing

Auditors, sharpen your pencils! 

Hi, I’m Mike Sanderson, I entered New College in 1999. As before, my full comment is at mikesand.com. 

By the way Trustee Spalding, from the search meeting yesterday, apologies to General Counsel Galvano, but after you have finalists your search no longer gets to be shady. I mean, not shady under the metaphor of the Sunshine Laws. 

Anyway, I asked to speak on the audit plan, and I note the line, about admissions, quote, “avoid repeat allegations of misconduct.”

Too late. 

As you should know, in my comment to the Board of Governors in June, I asked for an investigation into the shambolic new athletics department, and yesterday I was informed it will happen.

Did you even apply to the NAIA by July 1 as you told the media and prospective students you would? Your dubiously-qualified women’s soccer was out there tweeting “New College of Florida (NAIA)”. Also, what’s with her being a part-time financial advisor or something? Is MLM an intercollegiate sport? 

When you’ve got a mix of tens of millions of dollars and some deeply dishonest people, what do you think is going to happen? A lot of work for auditors. Maybe New College should open an institute for that. 

Thank you.

April 26, 2023: Accountability

This is an expanded version of a comment made to the New College Board of Trustees at its April 26, 2023 meeting.

My name is Mike Sanderson, I came to New College in 1999 from Miami Palmetto Senior High School. 

First, I want to assure you my comments are sincere and offered from my perspective as an alum, specifically, in 2001 and 2002 as editor of the student newspaper I was as involved as any student in the first meetings of this board. However, given the difficulty of a 1 minute comment, I have submitted expanded version of this and my previous comments comments on mikesand.com. 

I asked to speak today about the accountability plan. As an alum, I ask the board to focus on the graduation rates. To alums every student who didn’t graduate on time is a friend and classmate whose adult life was delayed, hobbled, or even shattered. 

Everyone knows New College’s graduation rate is dragged down by the onerous thesis process, everyone knows it drives students away, before and during the thesis process. 

Even when students do complete it, the process is expected to be some kind of ordeal. 

This is not historical, I have heard recently that last year faculty make the process burdensome discretionarily for one of our most distinguished graduates.  

Tenure is also on the agenda. I see that Professor Baram has written a letter.  I wrote a letter for Baram’s tenure in 2002 and he repaid me in 2004 by refusing to let me schedule a Baccalaureate exam two weeks before graduation. This  humiliated me in front of my whole family. I was allowed to schedule one for graduation week, the morning of graduation, but the experience was so crushing I took 7 years to do the revisions. Among other reasons, absolutely no one followed up with me to ensure I did receive my degree. Obviously this led directly to a miserable, immiserating post-graduation experience.  

Apparently many of these serious issues have been mitigated in the ensuing two decades. Regardless, I take this historical moment to focus on accountability for New College’s unaccountable thesis process and the negative effect it has on our graduation rate. 

I urge the New College Board of Trustees and Interim administration:

• today, to allow students who have substantially completed requirements to participate in the ceremony with their class on May 19;

• boost graduation rate this year by making clear to faculty they will be held accountable if their students don’t schedule baccalaureates in time;

• in the coming years, poll students throughout the thesis process about if they think faculty are helping them to graduate on time or placing obstacles, and keep the results private from the faculty sponsor at least until after the student has graduated; 

• better supervise the upcoming secret degree conferral meeting, and hold faculty accountable for any unexpected surprises sprung on students from that meeting; and finally  

• accelerate the process to make a masters-level thesis one of several options to demonstrate honors, which I would call “honors project”. Other valid honors projects could include a congressional internship, shipping an iPhone app, making a rap album, or playing baseball for four years, showing the highest level of conduct consistent with an honors college. 

The last deserves elaboration before anyone jumps to conclusions. In my life since leaving New College 19 years ago, I have seen how educational and personal development is more than just books and papers. I believe that 4 years of playing intercollegiate sports would be a powerful complement to a rigorous academic education. But the “highest level of conduct” is key. 

The term “capstone project” is lame that it should be reserved for the last-ditch option for students whose other projects fall apart, but students doing capstone projects should still graduate. 

The process has merit. I remain proud of my thesis, The Great Ringling, about John Ringling’s efforts to develop Sarasota and how that’s built into the grounds of his estate, largely from archival research at the Sarasota History Center. It’s currently being analyzed by the Jane Bancroft Cook library because of its potential interest to the community, and the Ringling Museum also requested a copy for its library. I rather would have walked in 2004 like i expected, and the Board of Governors rather I would have walked as well. 

And to the final point about the “honors project”: This must come from the board because the faculty will never go along with moving away from a a dissertation-style honors project, simply because every single faculty member made that life choice to write a dissertation, and that life choice worked out for them, and that’s literally why they’re here as faculty members. The board of Trustees and the Board of Governors should make faculty accountable-- not in the areas of classroom instruction or research, which are outstanding-- but in their role in dragging  that faculty understand their job is to have their students graduate, not to prevent it. Tenured or not, faculty should be accountable for doing their job: To graduate students.