For three years now, fellow alumni and I have written guest columns demanding accountability and financial transparency from New College of Florida's administration.
And we've been justified in doing so.
For example, HBO host John Oliver told his national audience in June that New Collegeboosted enrollment by recruiting more than 70 baseball players, including 12 catchers and seven first basemen.
And in a recent Herald-Tribune guest column, New College alum Mike Sanderson revealed that he had examined the state's official numbers and found that half of the school's growth came from paying 132 foreign students $2.8 million a year.
I want to be clear: foreign students enrich the educational experience in so many ways.
But foreign students usually pay
full price, and they are normally major profit generators for colleges.
They usually don't represent a major expense for a college.
And recently it was reported that New College has asked faculty to make budget cuts while spending $800,000 a year on public relations firms – including a crisis communications consultant – and while maintaining a huge in-house marketing team of 13 employees.
Throughout all of this, the school has claimed that alumni are merely malcontents critical of the conservative takeover.
It even moved to disaffiliate the official alumni association, which is ironic because out of all of New College's alumni groups, the association was by far the least critical of the school's administration.
Immediately after the 2023 takeover, alumni worried that the new leadership would act in bad faith and began creating parallel structures even as the alumni association worked to salvage a positive relationship with the administration.
Yes, it is absolutely true that alumni have penned dozens of critical articles.
But none of them have discussed politics.
All of them have been laser-focused on financial and administrative mismanagement – about which there has been plenty to criticize – or on falling educational standards at Florida's designated honors college.
So if alumni stand accused of demanding accountability, we must plead "guilty as charged."
We have significant skin in the game: it is our alma mater, and we want it to succeed regardless of who is at the helm.
More importantly, the money being squandered is ours.
Most alumni are Florida taxpayers who want taxes spent wisely, and many have been major donors to the New College Foundation – including a fund estimated to be worth at least $2 million that the alumni association brought into its 2002 marriage with the Foundation.
The facts on alumni activity
And here's a detail that has been left out of the narrative: while the New College administration paid PR firms, hired lobbyists into administrative positions, bought students and transferred housing funds to build a baseball stadium, alumni quietly kept the lights on.
When students went hungry in hotels far from campus, it was alumni who funded food banks.
When student activity fees were shunted to athletics programs no one asked for, it was alumni who funded on-campus events and clubs. These weren't political clubs, unless you consider chess political.
When the 2023, 2024 and 2025 graduation ceremonies were turned into political theater by an administration anxious for headlines, alumni held off-campus ceremonies for any student who wanted their name called, a walk across a stage and speakers celebrating their accomplishments.
When the school's newspaper, founded in 1965, was shuttered in 2024, alumni donations kept student journalism alive in an online paper, the Old School Catalyst.
Alumni have also funded other literary projects where students were rightly afraid of administrative interference.
Presenting at an academic conference is a big deal for any scholar; as an undergraduate, it is career-changing.
The administration has been cagey every year about whether or how much it would fund student travel – and when it did, the amount was inadequate.
Alumni have privately sent two dozen students to conferences and funded research for several more.
When the school stopped funding reunions – which the 2002 agreement obligates it to do – alumni stepped in.
Reunions are not just parties; they're important networking opportunities for students with alums.
One of the alumni "parallel organizations" has taken up the mantle, bypassing the school to work with student government on meet-and-greets for students entering the workforce.
And this work goes beyond big things like research funding and newspapers.
For three years, a brave alum known only as "the Tampon Fairy" kept campus restrooms stocked with feminine hygiene products and other items.
Student government now handles sanitary items, but the fairy still provides other basics that are supported by the alumni community and local businesses and organizations.
We're the adults in the room
Every time its inability to manage basic college administration is exposed, New College of Florida's leadership lashes out at alumni.
But throughout this ordeal, alumni have stepped up to help students without regard to politics – and we have unfailingly been the adults in the room.
Rather than responding to candid observations about incompetence and mismanagement, New College President Richard Corcoran's administration has chosen to demonize us.
That's as damning an indictment of its performance as its many poor decisions and waste of taxpayer money.
William Rosenberg is president of theNovo Collegian Alliance and a 1980 graduate of New College of Florida.
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: New College keeps attacking alumni. Here's what it won't say | Opinion
