New College, Part 4: A Business Plan and a Comedy Show In our final episode of the series, Lydia walks us through New College's search for a permanent President, and stumbles on a lot of questionable fiscal shenanigans that are happening with seemingly zero accountability or oversight. To close it out, Lydia subjects Thomas to torture via the comedy stylings of New College's Dean of Students. https://savenewcollege.org/ New-College-Business-Plan Aug 2023.pdf NCF-Business-Plan-Nov 2023.pdf If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 53, new college number four, the fourth and final for now.
Or is it?
Or is it?
Great question.
We think it's the final for now, but you never know.
I mean, it really is an ongoing story.
When we last left off, we had just discussed the interim president getting paid an absurd amount of money for interim president.
But the committee, the school, they've got to find a real president.
Who are they going to find?
Who's it going to be?
So many qualified people in the country that could be the president of the school.
Hmm.
We'll see.
Can't wait to learn about that.
I'm sure it will be a very fair process.
Before we get to that though, I've just got to say, not only can you skip this commercial break if you go to patreon.com slash where there's woke, you also can get the bonus that we've released, which was the lawsuit filed by one, the honorable Scott Gerber, the most clueless out of him.
Here's the thing.
Okay.
I got a question for you.
Who would you rather take a law class from Scott Gerber or Jason Kilbourne?
Man.
I'll have an easy answer.
I think I would say Gerber.
Holy, really?
Because I think he's so oblivious that he probably is pretty kind to his students.
What?
Kilbourne, I feel like, is a jerk.
Oh my God, we have very differential.
Okay, sorry, we can't do the rest of the show.
Killborn, I think, could be a good law professor as long as you don't like trip up his bullshit ego.
Worldview.
Yeah, like I think he actually is a pretty decent professor when everything's going well.
He's that kind of person where the minute he's like, he's really thin-skinned.
But I think if you don't mess with that, where's, Gerber's an idiot.
He like, he's, he's not, he's, he professes to be a scholar of Clarence Thomas.
And files, lawsuits and, well, okay, we can't give it away, but the, like, I don't know, man, I would take- All right, I'm going to think about it.
I'm going to think about it and I'll have to- And we're going to have a hard conversation, you and I. As just like, as a husband and wife about this.
Right, this is a marital problem now.
So anyway, if you want to learn more about that and our pending divorce, go to patreon.com slash weatherswell to get the bonus.
In the meantime, we got to get to part two.
We got to hear about this, the best of the best of the best that the selection committee is finding for president.
See how that goes.
So the school year happens, we talked about everything from the student's perspective, the faculty perspective, the baseball team's perspective.
This guy's fucking wallet perspective, yeah.
Yeah, but he couldn't serve as interim president forever, so they had to launch a... Not unless they sweetened the deal.
They had to launch a search, a nationwide search for a president.
And let me tell you who served on that committee.
The search committee was announced April 2023.
So pretty soon after, you know, just a couple months, he is interim president.
And then they develop the committee because they know, you know, we need to get someone in here permanently.
So the committee includes Dr. Mark Bauerlein.
So that is a board member.
Ron Cristaldi, board member, Charles Kessler, board member, Matt Lipinski.
At the time, he was a board member in the faculty chair.
He's the one that walked out during the meeting when they denied tenure to fellow faculties.
You guys are leaving me off the group text.
Some alumni, representative from a Florida House district, a variety of different people, and also Robert Allen.
That's supposed to mean something to me.
Bob Allen, the guy we've been talking about.
Oh, okay.
Bob Allen, who's been coordinating everything behind the scenes.
He's on the presidential search committee.
And Bridget Ziegler, Moms for Liberty, co-founder, who is on the Sarasota County School Board, and she was recently in the news because of the threesomes.
Oh, her!
Oh, okay.
Love her.
Who decides who's on this committee?
I know we're in 18 levels of bureaucracy bullshit, but how the hell?
Where did she come from?
Chair Deborah Jenks, the person who was... The chair single-handedly... The chair single-handedly selects...
The selection committee.
Yes.
Wow.
It says selected by Board of Trustees Chair Deborah Jenks.
Wait, she selects the entire thing?
That's what this looks like.
Wow.
That's my understanding.
Isn't that crazy?
Oh, it comes back to Deborah Jenks.
Yeah.
And the chair of the presidential search committee is Matt Spaulding, who was communicating with R.C., who we believe to be Richard Corcoran, via text messages prior to being appointed interim.
And again, he is Hillsdale College guy.
They did a significant search, I guess.
They had final three, including Richard Corcoran and the other two, which were I will not call them pathetic, but another another news outlet was like, these are like fake almost to make them look to make Richard Corcoran look way better.
Well, I guess we just have to choose this man.
What about him seems not qualified.
Just their experience.
Let me see if I can grab the finalists.
In fairness, Richard Corcoran didn't have any fucking experience.
Yeah, that's true.
Tyler Fisher was one of the other finalists.
An Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literature.
He's over at Core Faculty in the PhD program for Texts and Technology at the University of Central Florida.
He got his degrees in Philosophy at Oxford.
And he's been at UCF since 2018.
So in other words, way more qualified than Corcoran.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, like, reasonable publications were saying that there's no way that this person would get the president position.
I see what you're saying, but also, like, I think if you saw them in any other presidential system, you'd be like, no way.
The guy they chose to be the interim was profoundly unqualified, right?
Or am I wrong?
What was his actual qualification before being appointed?
Richard Corcoran, that he was the education commissioner under DeSantis.
He has no background in education.
He just served at the state level.
Once you get that first thing on your resume, then you can leverage that to, okay.
And then the other person is Robert Gervaisi, and he was an interim president at the University of Mount Union, and then he was also president at a couple of other schools and is on the board of directors.
Wow.
He sounds way experienced.
Yeah, actually he does.
I don't see their CVs in front of me.
I'm just getting the high-level stuff.
And with an MBA in marketing from Wharton, master's and doctoral degrees in classics from Ohio State.
So way more qualified.
Okay.
Good point.
Yeah.
I guess if I were ranking this just based off of these little blurbs.
Mary fuck, kill.
It'd be Robert Gervaisy.
Mary fuck, hire for president.
Yeah.
And then, and then I don't know.
And then everything I know about Richard Corcoran, I put him last, but yeah, I don't know.
Somebody who, somebody suggested those were dummy candidates basically, but yeah, I don't know about that.
They seem kind of real to be honest.
Yeah.
Okay.
So wouldn't you know it, October 2023, guess who got the president?
That philosopher guy.
Yeah, no, Corcoran.
So now we see that Corcoran is just full steam ahead.
All the things that he's been working on as the interim, they're just moving, moving, moving.
And I want to talk about one of the things that he was doing over here.
They were able to They probably didn't have to try very hard, but they were able to secure a lot of money from the state, significant money.
And part of that money was tied to producing a business plan.
They would not release the money, you know, X percent of the money, without seeing a business plan about how it was going to be used, the specifics, etc., etc.
Why would you call it a business plan and not a budget proposal?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's a school.
I texted our friend and I was like, hey, are business plans normal for higher education?
Just because he is very involved in higher education in California.
And he was like, I don't really know that you'd call it a business plan exactly.
And he hadn't necessarily seen anything like that from his experience.
But they did call it a business plan in the language from the legislature in Florida.
And it was submitted to the Florida Board of Governors November 2023.
In it, they talk about it is a business plan.
Like they have a whole section.
Step one, hire all our friends for way too much money.
Step two, profit.
It starts with a comparison to Japan.
And I was reading through it.
I was like, what is happening?
It was like Japan's big mistake and why we're not going to repeat the same mistake that Japan made over here in New College of Florida.
Yeah, our 700 person.
Okay.
It is nuts.
And then there's a whole section about marketing, and it's like, here are some logos we've drafted, and here is some user-friendly mobile things that you can look at for this.
So far, nothing about how they intended to spend any of the money that they were requesting.
Just talking about Japan and talking about marketing materials.
Was that for a marketing budget?
No, they do not detail anything.
There is money spoken about, but what it talks about specifically in the business plan is something called the Freedom Institute that they want to develop.
Oh my God.
The Freedom Institute is a prototypical free speech center that we see on a lot of other college campuses.
Essentially serving as a safe space for conservatives and right-wingers that they bring in to give speeches to.
Chris Ruffo just spoke at the Benson Center over in Colorado.
So a lot of schools have these, but New College did not.
You say they have them.
Do they have them and it's like a student organization or what, you know, is it normal to like the school funds them?
Normally they are funded by a Like a donor?
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
This would be funded by taxpayers.
Okay.
The New College Freedom Institute, they wanted to launch it in fall 2024.
So what exactly would they do there?
They say that, you know, that they want to host all these speakers and, you know, it would be like a flowery language, all these things.
And then additionally, recognize and award those who have suffered from and persevered through censorship that sought to limit freedom of thought and expression.
Okay. - In other words, appear on Where There's Woke podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Get a special thing here.
What are they requesting in funding for this?
They are asking for $50 million.
Okay.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
And it's because they want to, they're going to build a brand new building.
And what sucks… To house all the freedom.
Yeah, you have a lot of freedom to house.
What sucks is that their plan, where they're going to put this building, is on land that is right on the bay that was donated to the college back in the 60s, intended to be used as a preserve.
And now they want to build this huge two football field size building.
I'm sorry, that's two on the nose.
Yeah, I know.
Fifty million dollars, or it's going to be even more, I think.
Fifty million dollars is like the beginning stages.
It's a down payment?
Jesus.
And the preserve, not only has it been important for wildlife and the environment, it's also helped to shield the neighboring areas from flooding during hurricanes.
And so now if you build something on Florida, historically, you know, known to be at sea level for most of the state and sinking, now you're going to have a new building in a high-velocity flood zone.
What is that going to mean for the people who live near there?
What kind of risks are they having to assume now?
They were told they would be involved in the planning of this, but they weren't.
And the plan just came out with an architect that drew up a bunch of things.
The neighborhood has started coming to the board meeting saying, what are you doing?
This is our neighborhood.
And you guys just aren't even talking to us about this.
Like, you say you're going to and you ignore us.
What phase is this in?
Like, was this approved or anything?
I think it's still pretty early.
They have not broken ground or anything like that.
Yeah, but was the money awarded or set aside?
It's hard to tell because ultimately what you're going to hear from all of this is that the legislature is just writing checks, so many checks to New College, and there isn't even a budget that has been produced for New College.
Okay, I would like to remind everyone that part of the rationale for taking over this fucking school was fiscal irresponsibility.
Yeah.
Also, if that weren't enough, they are also really eager to launch a presidential scholar-in-residence program.
Andrew Doyle, Titania McGrath, who pops up all the time, he is a presidential scholar-in-residence.
Same three fucking people.
Presidential scholar-in-residence!
He signed a contract and he got $40,000 for four weeks.
Wow.
To do independent study projects for four students.
This is the griftiest fucking grift to ever grift.
And there's an organization called Save New College where they're starting to document a lot of these things and pull together contracts and all of these various things and then preparing questions that they're demanding Richard Corcoran answer.
And one of their questions is, why is he getting $40,000 for four weeks when a different presidential scholar in residence was paid $6,000 for the same time expectations?
What is the difference there?
Like, come out and say it.
He's really good at Twitter.
What you're saying.
Yeah.
Amazing jokes.
It's the same one joke every single time.
Another program that they're really excited about, they say that they're going to start their own venture fund in the business plan.
Okay, why?
Why is that happening?
Do they have a business school?
No, because everything is individualized like majors.
I mean, they have business degrees in economics and all those sorts of things.
But yeah, they want to start their own venture fund.
They are really excited about partnering with other entities.
And I had recently seen and did some digging on this.
One of those new partners is Ricketts College of Great Books.
Now, Ricketts is Joe Ricketts.
He's the billionaire owner of the Chicago Cubs.
Very Republican, very racist.
He had some emails that leaked that said, Christians and Jews can have a mutual respect for each other to create a civil society.
As you know, Islam cannot do that.
As you know.
Yeah.
And then it goes on, therefore, we cannot ever let Islam become a large part of our society.
Muslims are naturally my, and then in parentheses, our enemy due to their deep antagonism and bias against non-Muslims.
What the fuck was this about?
Not exactly sure, because that was in 2019.
This is not, that's not an old email.
That's pretty recent.
Was there like a Muslim baseball player that they were going to sign?
Yeah.
What the fuck is that about?
Okay.
He's also really into the birther conspiracies about Obama.
And he, you know, this stand-up guy, he's going to actually be their commencement speaker at New College for graduation this year.
So what is this Ricketts College of Great Books that I just mentioned?
This is, from what I can see, a Nebraska LLC that is seeking approval to operate as a post-secondary institution.
I was looking through their application.
It was submitted February 9th, 2024, and the numbers that they're presenting say that they are assuming they'll become fully accredited in 2026, at which point we'll join this entity called SARA and offer our courses to students outside of Nebraska.
They want to offer, like, associate's degrees, bachelor's degrees, and certificates in the great books.
I don't really totally understand how you can make an entire curriculum based off of that, but they're really trying.
In the application, they say that they will not offer courses to students until after the application is approved, and that they have not entered into any agreements with other institutions with the transferability of their credits, and they won't be able to do that until they're accredited, which would be at least a year from this point in time.
But they announced a partnership with New College, January 12th, 2024.
Jesus.
This application was submitted February 9th.
February 9th, 2024 is when they submitted their application, not even to get accredited, seeking approval to operate as a post-secondary institution.
So they already had a deal before they had that?
Yeah.
Before they even applied for that?
Yeah.
What the fuck?
Something is going on.
Something is freaking weird.
Seems grifty.
Yeah.
Now, remember when we heard that really kind old lady in one of the previous episodes be like, um, there's some allegations that the people are profiting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Holy fucking shit.
No kidding.
Yeah.
Each of the board members was like in their yacht when they said that?
That's Joe Ricketts.
That's what we're looking at from their business plan.
Again, their business plan was really light on the details except for their logos that they offered.
I'll attach the business plan because it's really fun to look at.
And again, it's like two pages on Japan.
I don't know why.
This is unreal.
Very strange.
This is so much taxpayer money.
It's a lot of taxpayer money.
And it does not stop there.
Here we have a recent clip because we need to talk about the board voting on approving a bonus for Richard Corcoran.
Oh, because he's doing an amazing job?
He's doing an amazing job.
And I sent you that clip, so why don't we go ahead and hear that now.
Has anyone consulted with the foundation about whether or not they have sufficient funds to pay this?
I am concerned about the depletion of foundation funds.
We know that the divisions have needed to use a lot of foundation funds this year in order to bring in all the candidates for interviews.
We know that they have not received budgets for this year from the administration and so we're running on faith.
We know that a number of receipts that are submitted to the foundation are not paid in a prompt way And so I just have concerns, and I'm wondering if anyone on the committee checked with the Foundation about whether or not it is viable for them to pay this money.
We'll have General Counsel Galvano answer that, please.
Yes, that was an issue that had come up earlier, and so I confirmed that the Foundation does have the funds and has set these funds aside.
Thank you.
For the bonus?
I wanted to make the obvious comment here.
President Corcoran has brought in $50 million in appropriations, the largest annual infusion of financial resources in the school's history and more than colleges obtained in the total last ten years.
My assumption is that previous presidents also received bonuses.
This seems to be a bonus that was actually earned.
Thank you, Trustee Spaulding.
Any other questions?
Do you see Christopher Ruffo in the background?
Yeah.
Jesus.
So, Richard Corcoran's getting $200,000 bonus from the new college foundation, the non-profit arm of the school.
This brings his salary to $900,000.
Again, $83,000 housing stipend, $12,000 car allowance.
Most of that money is coming from the foundation.
Oh, is that not the normal source of funding for the school?
I'm not entirely sure, but a George Mason University research professor named James Finkelstein studies public university present salary specifically, and he looked at the study that was done to estimate the compensation package for Corcoran, and he said that It was poorly done.
They built the package based off of private schools like Hillsdale instead of public schools, and in quotes, this is totally out of whack.
He estimates the cash value of Corcoran's position is $6.5 million over five years.
And that makes him the second highest paid college president in Florida, only behind Ben Sasse at the University of Florida.
Oh, God.
And he gets about $1.5 million.
Wow.
This is important because do you remember that Florida state senator that said something's going to happen there back in 2020?
Joe Gruders.
His wife is the executive director for the New College Foundation.
Oh, wow.
And again, they're paying for the bonus in full.
I don't know how much of the rest of his compensation package they're paying for, but I spent a lot of time looking through their 990s.
I was trying to see the money movement, what that looked like for the foundation.
I did not find anything like weird donors necessarily, but the Save New College organization, their website calls out one of their questions is, are the donors aware that their Donations are being used in this way.
How were their donations provided?
You know, were they earmarked for certain things in particular?
Because you can do that as a donor, especially a significant donor.
Or did they donate money that can be used for whatever purpose?
Are they aware?
They want to know.
So in all, when we're talking about money, New College of Florida is asking for $416 million over five years.
$227 million would be from the state, and then they are requesting that the state enter into $189 million via bonds.
Oh, like taxpayer bonds.
Yeah.
When I looked at year over year, I tried to pull this together from the State University System of Florida and their overview of allocations documents.
So bear in mind, these numbers, they should be apples to apples.
They don't include things like capital outlay or any non-recurring appropriations, to the best of my knowledge.
But it should be apples to apples comparison.
In 2017-18, New College's allocation was $31.1 million, essentially.
college's allocation was $31.1 million, essentially.
It went up 10 percent the following year in 1819, went up 3 percent in 1920, went down in 2020-21.
That makes sense.
COVID by about 5 percent, went back up 3 percent, 21-22 to $34.5 million, remain essentially unchanged to 2022-23, 34.68 million, and then went up 52 percent in 23-24 to $52.8 and then went up 52 percent in 23-24 to $52.8 million, an increase of 18 million.
But he's bragging about getting a $50 million.
That counts as something else or something?
Yeah, so they have capital outlay projects that are getting approved.
They have, you know, that deferred maintenance that the state never wanted to take care of.
Suddenly now they have the money to send over to take care of that.
And again, that $416 million total over five years, when you're looking at just this year, it's about $82 million in total.
The rationale is this school costing the taxpayers too much money.
Yeah.
And then they do all this stuff.
And they also are going to give this president a massive bonus based on the justification that he secured more money.
Yeah.
That's also taxpayer money.
Yeah.
And Observer Media Group had a pretty significant opinion piece.
And part of the opinion piece, they had someone who is a veteran of corporate boards look through the business plan that I read to you in portion, you know, the Japan and all those things to get his thoughts.
To be the best liberal arts college in America, how will this be measured?
It doesn't say.
Further, there is no timeline, nor a cash burn rate on the sports program.
When I look at a business in which to invest, here's what I look for.
What is the product?
Why is the business's product better than what is currently available?
What is the size of the market?
What share does it believe it can capture?
What investment is required to bring the product to market and capture that market share?
How long will it take to bring the product to market?
What is the expected return on the investment?
Always the same six questions.
I could not find the answers to any of these questions.
Also, it's not a fucking business.
Right.
The other piece that they're trying to do is, you know, when they're comparing New College to all the other public colleges and saying, you know, they're not performing as well and the cost is too much per student, et cetera, et cetera.
We have to take it over.
Then on the flip side, they start comparing it to private schools to tout, you know, like how amazing of an investment it is.
And they are requesting that the legislature amend law so they can start using operational savings to fund capital improvements.
Right now, that is something that is not allowed for public colleges.
But they say Florida private schools such as Ringling, Eckerd, Rollins, Flagler can borrow and fund capital improvements from savings via state-sponsored financing mechanisms.
Public colleges are prohibited different participation. - Yeah, 'cause usually it's a savings is like, It's taxpayer money.
Lawmakers have judged that this would create excessive risks for taxpayers, but the exclusion of New College from this approach has led to existential risks for the college itself.
New College will seek to be permitted to take the risk to succeed.
The college will work with the Board of Governors to pursue legislation that will allow for this change.
But why wouldn't you just propose expenditures to do this stuff?
And then that... And why are they complaining?
They just also got tons of capital outlay money for this budget.
Like they're getting everything they want.
They're just trying to mess with it so it can stay that way forever.
And they can fund whatever they want, their stupid Freedom Institute.
Yeah, but I mean, this just means they would have to be quote-unquote saving money somewhere else, right?
Yeah.
So I don't know what they plan to cut exactly.
Oh, maybe it's a way, yeah, maybe it's a way to get some sort of money that's allocated for something to be free for them to spend on something else.
Just move money around.
Yeah, that's probably what it is.
Because otherwise it doesn't make any sense.
Like, the money is the money that's going to this, you know, the taxpayer money.
Yeah.
They also submitted something called the Student Success Plan Monitoring Report, which is required if you score X number of points or lower on the state's performance-based metrics system.
It's how they decided that New College was not doing well, and so now they have to submit a report to show that they are making progress in those metrics.
And there are some positives in here.
Like, I want to be totally fair.
They have things like increasing scholarships, creating additional master's programs.
Their RBIs have gone up substantially.
They want to have free 24-7 tutoring available for students.
I think that's great.
They want to hire additional academic coaches.
They want to offer free laptops, so that's not a barrier for students.
They want to make improvements to campus life.
Those things are all great.
But I want to be clear that these things are able to come about because they are getting the Florida legislature to sign off on whatever they want.
When Florida has said for years when New College would ask for money, no.
They just said no, no, no, no, no.
And now they're able to actually make these things that they could have done years ago if they had the money for it.
This is insane.
And next to the chart of retention rates that they put in there when they're, like, estimating out, the first thing they did to improve their retention rate forecast was, in quotes, fix the toxic culture.
So, you know, that's an objective measure.
Retention of, like, professors or something?
Students.
Because they had a lot of students that they said would drop out after freshman year at New College.
That was something that was tough.
Like, in the previous... In the previous years, yeah.
- Oh, interesting. - So they think that fixing the toxic culture is something that will change that.
To go out, I just wanna talk about where we're at now, like pretty recently.
And this is the mission update.
So I had said the mission statement is defined in statute, but they have decided that they want to do another one that would not be via statute.
It would just be internally.
It's not clear.
So they had a meeting April 23rd.
This is very, very recent.
And they basically gathered public together to start brainstorming what they want to see in a mission statement.
And they started with a draft, an initial draft for each of these little work group tables to work on.
Legal came in to clarify that it was okay for them to do this.
They're not violating statute because they're trying to draft an additional mission statement and they want to have a final draft available May 13th so it can be for public comment prior to the June 13th board meeting.
So they're working on this kind of like pretty tight timeline.
And one of the questions that was brought up as they're kicking this off was, was there any consideration made that most students are not here during those 30 days, May 13th to June 13th, and a lot of the faculty are also off at this time.
So what does substantive community input look like, truly, during that period of time?
And they kind of obfuscated, like they weren't really interested in answering that question specifically.
Who wrote this initial draft that I'm looking at?
That I don't know.
I think it was a combination of people.
It's pretty awful.
Okay, I just wanted to get that on the record.
Yeah.
Wait, is this another board member?
No, so this is a... Notice and comment?
Kind of, but it's more of like a workshop.
Oh, okay.
So they're asking these questions and then they are divided up in tables where they sit and they talk about the mission statement as currently drafted and they all report back.
Why do they think they need a new mission statement?
Is this important?
No, it's not.
But this is what they're spending their time on.
So wouldn't you know it, Chris Rufo was heavily involved in drafting this mission statement draft.
Really?
I would have thought he would.
That's why I'm asking, like, is this important?
That's a busy guy.
That's a guy who's got a lot of bullshit to do, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, he's engaged in all the board meetings.
You heard him yell at Amy Reid, Dr. Amy Reid, to tell her to shut up.
You saw him throw up the thumbs up when Richard Corcoran got another $200,000, and Matthew Spalding said, you know, now we're actually giving a bonus to someone who earned it, as previously no one else had.
And so here's the language that he put together.
You found out it was him?
He is one of the writers.
He has not claimed that he has written this 100%.
He is the only one who has publicly shared his involvement with this.
But I imagine another trustee member, you know, take your pick, honestly.
A lot of them are so terrible.
But this is what he's put together.
At New College of Florida, our mission is to revive the great tradition of the classical liberal arts and to cultivate good citizens, artists, academics, entrepreneurs, and statesmen.
The founders of New College envisioned a community of scholars modeled on the University of Oxford that would provide students with a classical liberal arts education and pass down the learning of our civilization in the classical tradition.
In our era of stifling academic orthodoxy, this task is more urgent than ever.
At New College, our unwavering commitment is to rediscover the deepest purpose of education and to give students a foundation of logos, human reason, and techne, the applied arts.
Our distinguished faculty and student body, while advancing a diversity of opinions, hold a shared commitment to liberal principles, free speech, open debate, colorblind equality, all oriented to the pursuit of the highest good.
Let us be unapologetic.
We are a public university open to all in which exceptional students of any background can participate in the great tradition of the West.
Our calling is to provide a liberal arts education befitting free men and women and a free society.
While others are caught in the fray of ideology, we look up to the true, the good, and the beautiful.
We create students who will move the earth.
So the comment that happened at literally every single table during this workshop was, this is too long.
This is not a mission statement.
To the point where the person who's up there is, I think, the Dean of Students, David Rancourt.
And he says, OK, does everybody agree that it's too long?
Like, after he's read it a bunch of times, and they're like, yeah.
And he's like, OK, noted.
We have that.
Thank you.
But if you go to 5651, we'll hear from a faculty member who goes on to more eloquently speak to what she wants to do with this mission statement.
We pretty much agree with everything that's been said.
at New College. - Big into the mic. - Okay, is that better?
We pretty much agree with everything that's been said.
I guess the one thing we might quarrel with is we didn't find much in the draft that's been proposed that we thought was worth keeping.
A little bit of that language.
But fundamentally, I think we like the existing mission statement.
Maybe one or two words there that could be improved.
I don't think that there was anything we wanted to retain, and I would strongly recommend that we just ditch the existing initial draft and also focus on the state's statute language, which I would think would be something we would want to be consistent with.
We don't want to be in violation of anything that's outlined there.
That language goes back to when New College was established as an independent institution.
Well, she doesn't know how to use a mic, but she speaks the truth.
A problem we had with the initial draft was that it's a text that provokes controversy and argument rather than any... It's not a rallying cry that we can all agree to and feel comfortable with, so it's likely to exacerbate any... In other words, it sucks.
Sucks real bad.
Yeah.
And that's not something I think anybody would want.
All right, we can end there.
I can't tell if it's still on.
She'd think a microphone is just something you have to, like, be touching vaguely for it to work?
the history of the college.
Does she think a microphone is just something you have to like be touching vaguely for it to work?
Like, sorry, I didn't change the volume.
That was the volume of the first thing.
I know.
Okay.
Yeah, so that's where they're at right now, you know, really spending valuable time.
Yeah, that's like current day.
Okay.
Last week.
That's what was happening last week.
So I am curious to see how much more money they can squeeze out of Florida taxpayers for all of this nonsense and what other kind of shenanigans they're going to get into.
I think the federal grand jury For Richard Corcoran is going to be really interesting.
I wonder if we're going to get some public documents from that.
No.
I mean, depending how far it goes.
Yeah, not from the grand jury, unless it's... No, no, no.
Unless they decide they want to indict in any of his... Right.
If he has to, you know, respond to any sort of discovery request, if we get anything from that.
And how much General Counsel Galvano... This is so much fucking grift.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
This is nuts.
Yeah.
This is why it needed a dedicated episode in this series because it's such an intricate web and it all comes back to these charter schools.
It's like, I didn't even get into Some of the craziest stuff from that bid rigging that I was speaking about, there are current people in the Department of Education for Florida who are involved, too.
I'm just concerned about, like, you know, we have listeners out in Florida.
I have friends out in Florida, and I'm just genuinely concerned about what public education is going to be looking like.
It's rough already in a lot of ways, and I am very concerned about how it's going to look in the coming years.
So, I don't want to say to lighten the mood, but why don't we listen to some comedy?
This is a new college-sanctioned group comedy class, supposedly, that was hosted downtown, and this was end of January of this year when this video was posted.
The dean of students attended, as did President Richard Corcoran.
Is this for a class?
I still don't… Well, I guess it says class, yeah.
So I guess it is a class.
But the dean, David Rancourt, I guess wanted to give his try at some stand-up.
And so he hopped up on that stage and we get to hear Will I be able to handle this?
I think I might have to leave.
All right, everyone.
You know how the Muppets in Muppets Christmas Carol get scared at the end?
And they're like, all right, it's too scary.
That's my secondhand cringe.
Yeah.
I'll see you later, everybody.
Enjoy.
Enjoy whatever this is.
Oh my God.
Good evening, everybody.
Gosh, it's so nice to hear applause.
I'm a dean of students.
I don't get applause.
It's a tough job.
I can't complain.
I've had a pretty good life.
I've been really blessed.
Grew up in a real small town, like 2,000 people.
It was a cool place to grow up.
Grew up on a farm.
You know, I had to walk like a mile to the bus stop every day.
It wasn't bad.
Good exercise.
There's this one girl that was at the bus stop every day, named Susie.
She's a pain in the ass.
You know, one of those kids that no matter what you get, the next day she's got the same thing.
You know what I mean?
You know, just piss you off.
Well, I get a new ball.
Susie got a new ball.
I get a new game.
Susie got the same game the next day.
And I went home one night and I said, Mama, isn't there something that I have that Susie can't have, doesn't have?
My mom, I'm seven.
Mom's trying to make me feel good, you know?
That's what moms do.
She said, well, David, there is something you have that she doesn't have.
I said, what's that?
She said, you look down between your legs.
That's called a penis.
Susie doesn't have one of those because she's a girl.
I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
So I go to bed, get up the next morning, walk on down that school bus, school bus stop, and I see Susie.
She's kind of got a little attitude, and I look over.
I said, Susie, I want to show you something.
Whip down my pants.
I pull out that little pecker and I said, this is called a penis!
I got one, you don't have one!
She kinda looks at me, doesn't say anything.
We go to school, everything's good.
Next morning I get up, I walk on down the school bus stop feeling really good about myself.
I see that little bitch, she's got a big ol' grin on her face.
Big ol' grin on her face!
And I go, alright Susie, what you got?
She looks at me, smiles, lifts up her skirt and says, David, my mama says I got one of these, I'm gonna have as many of those as I want!
Okay, how was it everyone?
I had to leave the earth.
I went to the moon.
I couldn't be anywhere around that.
No, I'm lying.
I had to hear that and I need to go to the hospital.
Yeah, it's pretty bad and it doesn't get better.
His other comedy, I guess, is pretty rough.
And then apparently Richard Corcoran went up on the stage after him.
No.
So no one decided to end the entire thing right then and there, which is what you would do if you were a human.
By the way, he's calling a seven-year-old girl a bitch.
A bitch, yeah.
Boy.
Healthy attitude toward women right there.
Richard Corcoran comes on.
Thank you.
Hi, we're canceling this entire school.
I'm actually the president of New College.
Jesus.
I make a shitload of taxpayer dollars.
This job doesn't really pay well, but it's a good job.
Oh, wow!
Jesus fucking Christ, the balls.
But that was our dean of students, or should I say our former dean of students.
Yeah, you should.
I have a feeling not for the same reasons.
There's a lot of gay jokes there.
I think he's trying to tell me something.
What?
Bunga bunga.
Bunga bunga?
It's like a racist thing he did as part of his set.
The last thing is my wife and I, we have six kids.
And people always say, Oh my gosh, you must be Catholic, you must be Mormon.
It's like, we're not Catholic or Mormon.
We just drink a lot.
I was talking to my oldest daughter the other day, and I said, you know, tequila.
How was school?
And she was complaining about fighting with her brother.
I go, I'll handle it, I'll handle it.
So I go over and I say, hey, Courvoisier, stop!
Stop it!
You know, Les has trouble finding Zeta.
Try finding Tequila and Courvoisier on the tourist things.
It doesn't exist.
But thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Oh, boy.
Boy, he's not getting the bonus for his comedy, that's for sure.
When reached for comment about the video, specifically David Rancourt's video, the university responded as if the news organization writing the article was akin to cancel culture.
They say, cancel culture is over at New College.
Comedy is a work of art, one that is reliant on our society's tenets of free speech and free expression.
New College supports its students, faculty, and staff's right to participate in artistic endeavors like a comedy performance or any other civil exercising of free speech and free expression.
Except for wearing a Black Lives Matter pin when you're an orientation leader.
That doesn't count, I guess, as free expression.
This is crazy.
Like this is actually crazy.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that the president came out and said he was going to fire the guy essentially because he was gay.
That's cool too.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, I may never get over this.
Thank you for starring me for the rest of my life.
But I know you've been curious about our favorite drag name, Randy Fine, what he's been up to.
Why couldn't it have been a drag show with Randy Fine?
Yeah, yeah.
This awful, homophobic, sexist, terrible comedy.
Yeah, well, apparently there is some major drama here that is pretty fresh as well.
He is trying to get the Florida Atlantic University president position.
He has come out and said that DeSantis essentially promised it to him.
He was like, why would I leave the legislature?
I've been there forever.
Why would I leave that and then like interview against like 60 other people for a job unless I knew I was going to like get it?
Because he was not a finalist.
And then Desantis's office came out and they were like, Randy doesn't know what he's talking about and you know going off and so there's been this weird drama back and forth and back and forth and now the search is suspended due to anomalies is what it says and some people think it's because they're going to redo it and get fined back in there.
No way.
That's what they think.
So, the interim president is extended through the end of 2024, and we'll have a new Florida Atlantic University, which is bigger than New College.
That's not hard.
Yeah.
So, they learned a lot from the New College takeover, and I think we'll see how things adjust for attempt number two, attempt number three, at other places.
We'll see.
Jesus Christ, this is so bad.
Yeah, it's bad.
Hey everyone, they want you to be mad at trans people so they can do this!
And steal all the public money and be a corrupt piece of shit and self-dealing and dealing with their friends.
This is why it serves them to have you always mad at some other thing, at some minority group, immigrants, trans people, gay people.
This is why they spend all their time doing that.
And then no one in Florida gives a shit, apparently.
I'm sure people do, but not to a degree that actually matters.
Nobody in power, nobody in power anyway, and the people like below are screaming and trying to be heard, but it might be too late.
So spread it far, spread it wide.
I'll include some links to some of the really incredible journalism I read.
I genuinely feel ill from watching that comedy.
I hope you're happy with yourself.
God, I'm going to be sick.
So embarrassing.
God.
People who don't have secondhand embarrassment are like, I don't understand how you live.
Well, that was crazy.
Is there, wait, is there more of this?
Are we done with New College?
I think we're done with New College for now.
Okay.
Well, we're definitely keeping an eye on that.
I think this concludes New College for the time being, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, I got to go recover physically and mentally.
And, uh, wow.
Well done.
Great research there.
Please just vote these people out.
Just get rid of these people, please.
Florida.
Would it be so hard?
Yep.
They're just interested in profiting for themselves and everybody that they like in their weird networks and their spider webs and they don't deserve it.
All right, well, thanks so much for listening to Where There's Woke.
Thanks so much, Hun, for the great research.
Well done.
Thank you.
And please support the show.
We don't get to make $900,000 from fucking taxpayer money grift.
Yeah.
We make zero taxpayer dollars that I know of.
Yeah.
So if you would like to support this research and this show, please go to patreon.com slash where there's woke.
