A room tucked away at New College of Florida used to be decorated wall-to-wall with student-made oil paintings and drawings. One side housed a collection of books covering topics like gender studies, Black history, and LGBTQ+ issues. Another corner featured art supplies, including crochet hooks, stitch markers, and knitting needles used by the college’s decades-old knitting club, Anarchy Deathsticks.
The space was a sanctuary for creativity, laughter, and free expression of identity, students said.
Two weeks ago, the space — known as the Gender and Diversity Center — was gutted without warning. The books, $100 worth of knitting supplies, student paintings, and decorations were gone, replaced by a few pieces of furniture and game tables.
“They erased all of the years of cultivation and community and replaced it with a foosball table,” said Auguste Bartels, a 21-year-old New College senior and president of Anarchy Deathsticks.
Outrage erupted among academics, activists, and book lovers on August 13 when images began circulating online of dumpsters filled with books from the public liberal-arts college’s main library and now-closed Gender and Diversity Center.
But it wasn’t just books that were trashed, some New College students and faculty say. The disposal, they say, also marked the abrupt dismantling of a community center that had served students for roughly three decades.
The New College administration’s response to the backlash has been inconsistent. At first, the college defended its actions, incorrectly citing state law, claiming the process was routine, and saying the Gender and Diversity Center’s books were left for students to collect. Then the college placed its library dean on administrative leave. Over the past week, a spokesperson has not answered questions from The Chronicle about why materials largely provided by students were left in a dumpster.
As state laws banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts rattle campuses nationwide, colleges are scrambling to comply. The bans typically target diversity offices, training, and statements. But like what occurred at New College, recent DEI attacks have also brought about the shuttering of identity-based centers and student-run spaces — far beyond what’s legally required.
The Book Dumping
When photos of the New College book disposal went viral, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists applauded it. Christopher Rufo, an activist who serves on the college’s governing board, wrote on X: “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.”
Rufo was one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s six appointees to New College’s Board of Trustees in 2023, which marked the start of a conservative takeover. Soon after, the board fired the institution’s president and replaced her with Richard Corcoran, a Republican and former Florida House speaker.
Over the past year and a half, the college has fired its chief diversity officer; eliminated its diversity, equity, and inclusion activities, including its Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence; and discontinued its academic program in gender studies. A number of students, faculty, and administrators have left the college.
In internal and public statements, New College has doubled down on the decision to dispose of the books.
The books from the main library, officials said, were tossed as part of a routine annual weeding process to remove items damaged from a leak. The college also cited a Florida law on state-owned property to justify that those books could not be donated or sold. In fact, the law does allow for the disposal of state-funded property through the sale or transfer to other governmental entities, private nonprofit agencies, or public sale.
As for the Gender and Diversity Center’s library, New College officials claimed that its books were associated with the gender-studies program that was eliminated by the college’s board last year. The statement also said that the books were made available for student collection at a “book drop location by the library.”
However, the center was a student-run initiative independent of the discontinued academic program. Students who saved the majority of the center’s books say they found them near the dumpster filled with the damaged books from the main campus library — and that they were never notified about being able to claim the books.
Nathan March, a New College spokesperson, said in an email to The Chronicle that the center is being “repurposed” but didn’t answer questions about why it was emptied of student materials.
So far, the administration has pinned blame on Shannon Hausinger, New College’s dean of the library. March confirmed that Hausinger was placed on administrative leave after it was revealed that the main library failed to “follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials.”
Hausinger began working at the college last February, having replaced Helene Gold, who was outspoken about her disagreements with the DeSantis-backed leaders installed at New College.
Removing books from libraries because someone disapproves of the ideas, opinions, or topics of the books is censorship — pure and simple.
David Wilkens-Plumley, a 59-year-old alumnus of New College and a Sarasota resident, said he called Hausinger’s office before she was placed on leave. Wilkens-Plumley said that when he asked her about the removal of the Gender and Diversity Center’s books, she responded that it was “not in her purview.”
Hausinger could not be reached for comment in the past week; her New College email appears to be inactive.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said that if state laws and policies were followed — as New College originally claimed was the case — then an employee shouldn’t be punished “for simply doing their job.”
Caldwell-Stone said it’s important to understand the distinction between New College’s book-weeding process, which is normal, and the disposal of books from the Gender and Diversity Center’s student-built collection. The weeding process should not be used to covertly get rid of controversial and disfavored books, she said.
“Removing books from libraries because someone disapproves of the ideas, opinions, or topics of the books is censorship — pure and simple,” she said.
The Center’s Shuttering
As some New College students and faculty see it, the story about the viral photo of dumped books is really a story about the closure of the Gender and Diversity Center.
The morning of the book disposal, Natalia Benavides, a 21-year-old New College senior and student archivist, visited the center on her way to work. She’d heard rumors that the space might close.
When she arrived, the center was already being emptied, she said. She quickly started collecting what items she could.
At one point, she said she saw a campus employee directing a group of movers to remove boxes that were filled with the center’s book collection, the knitting supplies, and other materials. When Benavides asked the employee what was happening, she said the response was that the books were headed to the main campus library to be “processed.”
A few hours later, Benavides returned to campus from work to find two broken boxes of the center’s books lying next to the dumpster. She didn’t see any of students’ other materials, leaving her to assume it was all trashed.
“There was no designated book-donation area — that did not exist anywhere,” she said.
Benavides said she, along with few alumni and members of the local nonprofit SEE Alliance, were able to save most of the books, although their efforts were met with resistance. According to Benavides, Hausinger, the library dean who was put on leave, and a campus police officer tried to stop the group from retrieving the books. It took a while, Benavides said, to convince Hausinger that the books beside the dumpster were separate from the damaged books from the main campus library.
When I think of New College as I’ve known it, I view the GDC as a staple.
While the Gender and Diversity Center’s books were largely spared and are now being stored off campus, Benavides is still mourning the loss of a student space she loved — one that was constantly filled with students laughing, reading, or making art, she said.
“When I think of New College as I’ve known it, I view the GDC as a staple,” Benavides said. “It embodies New College’s identity.”
Before the Gender and Diversity Center was established, there was a Gender Studies Collective that met in an old Sarasota motel in the 1990s, said Miriam Wallace, a former professor of English and gender studies who left the college after DeSantis’s appointees joined the board. Students gathered informally and also worked on academic projects with faculty.
In 2000, students involved with the gender-studies program and a group of students of color decided they wanted a space on campus dedicated to community building. Wallace was part of a group of faculty members and university leaders who made it happen.
The Gender and Diversity Center quickly became the heart of the campus, with students using the room to host club meetings and workshops, or to simply relax, Wallace said. The acclaimed author bell hooks visited some years ago. The center’s library grew, accumulating a student-curated collection that filled roughly four tall bookshelves.
Wallace said she wasn’t surprised the college moved to dismantle the center. “This looks to me like the next step,” she said. “It’s like, if we’re going to restrict it in the classroom, let’s see if we can extend beyond the classroom.”
Sarah Hernandez, an associate professor of sociology and Caribbean and Latin American studies, was also involved in establishing the Gender and Diversity Center. In the past, Hernandez said, faculty and students have been made aware of forthcoming routine weedings at the main campus library and allowed to take books that would otherwise be discarded.
Hernandez said that student-centric spaces are important to campus life. She hopes students will eventually find a new space to gather and rebuild the library elsewhere.
“It’s very unfortunate that in the context of Florida, the voters elected people who pass policies and act in ways that make it more difficult for students to have this respectful environment,” she said, “but people will always find ways to sustain their sense of dignity.”
