I am writing this on Day Two of the Sarasota Film Festival.
The city is alive in the way it only gets when it remembers what it is capable of.
The streets feel like they belong to people who chose to be here, who built something here, who keep showing up for this place.
That is the Sarasota I want to talk about.
Because the one dominating the headlines is a distraction.
It has always been a distraction.
I am a New College alumnus.
I studied biology with one eye always on the ocean.
I care deeply about civil rights, about environmental science, about the kind of rigorous intellectual culture that New College at its best has always represented.
I do not agree with every decision made over the last several years.
The media has taken much of it out of context, and the political climate in this state is as charged as anywhere in the country right now.
All of that is true.
What is also true is that New College was not in a sustainable place.
Enrollment was falling.
The financial picture was beyond bleak.
The campus, for all its beauty and genuine legacy, was falling apart in every way.
That does not make every subsequent decision the right one. But it does make the conversation more complicated than the loudest voices on either side are willing to admit.
Here is what Sarasota actually has, if we are willing to look at it clearly.
A coastline of genuine scientific and ecological significance.
A philanthropic and entrepreneurial community that has already demonstrated, repeatedly, that it can build things of lasting consequence.
The Sarasota Film Festival does not happen by accident.
None of what makes this city worth defending was accidental.
New College can be part of that story again.
As Florida’s No. 1 public liberal arts college, it sits within a world-class academic corridor in the region.
It should be the place where a student who loves marine life, the stage and the complexity of the world finds a serious education and a community that takes ideas seriously.
That was always the promise.
It remains the promise.
But that future does not build itself. It requires the business community to show up.
Mentors.
Speakers.
Research partnerships.
Real capital and real relationships flowing with the same intention this city brings to its cultural life.
It is why I have donated so much over the years to New College – in time, in resources and in commitment.
And it is why I will continue to do so.
Not out of obligation, but out of genuine belief in what this institution can be – and what this city deserves.
I hope my daughters choose to build their lives here.
That hope is not abstract. It is the reason I keep showing up.
Sarasota has everything it needs.
The question is whether this community is willing to come together in what comes next.
That future is worth building.
Mark P. Famiglio is president of the Sarasota Film Festival. He is an alumnus of New College of Florida, Class of 1975.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: I support New College. Let’s stop arguing and help it thrive | Opinion
Reporting by Mark P. Famiglio Guest columnist, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
