I’ve been involved with New College of Florida for three quarters of my life.
So how is it that I’m now staring at a document titled: “Jonathan Edward Miller vs New College of Florida – Petition Challenging Adoption of NCF Campus Master Plan”?
I showed up in Sarasota in 1970, a scrawny Jersey prep school kid with a love of natural history and newfound motivation fueled by the first Earth Day.
I signed up for an environmental biology course taught by revered and feared Dr. John Morrill.
We headed to the Bay where he admonished us to wade out with him instead of standing slack-jawed on the shore. Before he could finish his aquatic lecture, I started asking questions.
That was the start of a 56-year pattern of observing and questioning aspects of the New College campus.
Before I retired in 2014, I had become the director of the environmental studies program, an assistant to the vice president for finance and administration, chair of the Campus Master Plan Committee and president of the Alumnae/I Association.
And, upon retiring, I was named a Presidential Staff Ambassador – apparently because we don’t have emeritus status for staff members.
New College administration, trustees won’t listen
Over the years, my official involvement with campus planning kept increasing, culminating with my being put in charge of many aspects of New College’s 2008 campus master plan update.
That plan had to be amended in 2016 because we had a campus architect who thought the master plan was merely advisory. The New College of Florida Board of Trustees concluded that it was easier to change the plan than to alter a proposed building that was designed improperly.
In January 2023, New College experienced what one trustee called a “hostile takeover.”
Campus master plans are supposed to be updated every five years, so the college’s delinquency was a tremendous opportunity for the new administration to reshape the future vision of the campus.
And it seized that opportunity.
The well-publicized departure of many faculty obscured a similar loss of institutional memory in the administration as experienced staff left and were replaced by people with no knowledge of the campus – and minimal undergraduate liberal arts administration credentials.
Despite being retired, I kept working with students and attending meetings of the Campus Landscape Committee. That was until the spring of 2023 when the Campus Landscape Committee stopped meeting.
The New College of Florida Board of Trustees then deleted the two campus regulations that ensured participation of the students and faculty in the master planning process.
It became clear that any master planning would be top down and gestures of inclusion would be performative.
And with such a dearth of knowledge about the campus, it’s not surprising that many mistakes were made in the plan.
Did they really read this plan?
It’s not that there was a lack of feedback on this plan.
There were 93 separate submissions, and I submitted 149 pages of feedback.
However, I wonder if the trustees even skimmed the 210-page plan – much less the more than 250 pages of comments.
Why do I say that?
Just consider the following sentence from page 16 of the adopted plan: “The college is comprised of three campuses, known as East, West, South, and North.”
Shouldn’t that read “four campuses”?
Now is that a trivial error?
Absolutely, but my point is that it would have been easy, obvious and non-controversial to correct it.
The fact that three professional consultant teams, 13 duty-of-care, fiduciary trustees and the New College of Florida administration ostensibly reviewed this document – and yet no one caught this blatant error – speaks volumes about the rigor applied to this effort.
Is that the only error in the plan?
No. In fact, it is not even the only error on page 16.
There is also a statement that all of the college lies inside the city of Sarasota, which is false: it is actually spread between the city, unincorporated Sarasota County and Manatee County.
You get the drift.
So as you might imagine, my 149-page review raised dozens of substantive concerns with the draft master plan.
But despite some cursory questions by the board trustees, they weren’t genuinely interested in holding a detailed discussion of the plan.
And, perhaps predictably, the board trustees adopted the 210-page plan exactly as it was presented to them – even though there was some ambiguity regarding precisely which version they were actually adopting.
As noted above, I haven’t given up. I’m now heading to an administrative hearing.
Wish me luck.
Jono Miller is the current president of NCF Freedom and the former director of New College of Florida’s environmental studies program.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: New College won’t take good advice on bad campus plan | Opinion
Reporting by Jono Miller Guest columnist, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
