New College throws away thousands of books

SARASOTA — Hundreds of books, including ones about gender diversity and related topics, were thrown out by New College of Florida on Thursday.

Students and staff said they were not alerted.

Among those thrown out were student-owned and staff-donated books from the Gender and Diversity Center library.

Nat Benavides, an art history and literature student at NCF, was working as a student archivist on campus when she said she heard rumors of a book weeding happening on Thursday from student orientation leaders.

Students were saddened to have not been notified of the event — behavior Benavides said has become a trend since new administration took over at New College.

Benavides said she found two bins sitting in the middle of the Gender and Diversity Center filled to the brim. She also said a quick trip with an NCF alum to the campus dumpster showed even more along with student-made art and posters from the GDC.

Benavides managed to save a few bins of books and student work before her and other NCF students' efforts were stopped by campus police and librarians, who said they could not take school property.

New College students enlisted local organizations to come help rescue the books before they were hauled off.

Zander Moricz, the founder of student-led SEE Alliance, arrived on the scene to see what he and a few of his members first estimated were hundreds of books being placed in the dumpster.

After some calculations based on the size of the dump truck and the pile, Moricz said that number quickly rose to thousands.

Moricz and other organizations suggested to police a solution to the towering problem in the parking lot.

"We let them know that multiple educational nonprofits are willing to step in immediately and send trucks to pick up every single book, and the police informed us that they've been told that that will not be accepted and that they must throw everything away," Moricz said.

NCF public information officer Nathan March confirmed the situation while calling local media on the event "completely false," citing Florida law prohibits the school from donating the books.

According to Chapter 273 of Florida statute, NCF is prevented from selling, donating or transferring materials purchased with state funds — but with exceptions.

Those exceptions include donating the books to a nonprofit or having a public sale. The school states they had a public sale but students and staff said that never happened.

March said the book dump is part of a standard weeding process that removes materials that are old, damaged or "no longer serving the needs of the College."

The process is carried out by professional librarians trained to assess the collection and meet state requirements for an appointed Board review, March said, which is a regularly occurring review to ensure the "current needs" of student and staff are being met.

March said deselected materials are discarded through a recycling process when possible. He said the public was notified they could get the books but nobody took advantage of the offer.

In a contradicting statement, he said the books were not picked up, then were picked up.

"When the books were not claimed for pickup from the room, they were moved to a book drop location by the library where they were later claimed by individuals planning to donate the books locally," March said in a written statement.

The books went to the dump.

While the statute allows the school to make arrangements for surplus state-owned property to be disposed as scrap property, it only covers books strictly bought with state funds, excluding the materials donated and owned by students and staff.

While March notes "these books came from a number of sources, primarily donations over a number of years," GDC books were also wrapped into this year's book weeding process.

According to a social media post by Tamara Solum, one person who saw the book weeding observed books on diversity, women in the Senate, Supreme Court cases, reproductive health and gay marriage.

Benavides said NCF was aware of both the distinction between school- and student-owned books — the first which bears a school seal on the inside — and the lack of communication to notify the public of the culling.

"They never told the student body explicitly," Benavides said. "We've had a lot of issues with communication ... They kind of have been doing these changes discreetly, trying to not get any attention and to get rid of things as fast as possible so that they can change them to their liking."

Multiple sources said no one had been warned about the book dump, from students to nonprofits.

"This is a new low, because (NCF) is taking stories about gender and diversity and sending them to the dump, and it is the most disgusting and horrible visual you could ever imagine," Moricz said. "And it also is so stupid. You can be fascist without being wasteful. You can be fascist and still offer free books to the community around you."

The book dump was "unnecessarily cruel," the SEE Alliance leader said, as organizations around the county had been asking for book donations to replace materials ruined by Hurricane Debby.

Moricz tracked the dump truck to a nearby landfill, where he said the owners allowed him to video the books being dumped.

Amy Reid, an NCF French professor and director of the Gender Studies program before its closure last year, confirmed there was no notification to faculty either.

"As a faculty member and devout bibliophile, I was horrified to learn that the entire collection of books from the student-run Gender and Diversity Center had been thrown in the trash. The GDC is a student-run space. It was first established on campus more than 30 years ago and they had quite a collection of books that had been donated to them by students, faculty and community members," Reid said. "Now it's all gone."

Reid noted the library does have a standard practice to cull its literary collections by the school's librarians, but raised concern for the "coincidence" with the "destruction" of the GDC.

Online chatter grew fast after news of the incident spread, with some residents questioning New College's conservative takeover.

"First they came for the faculty and academic freedom. Then they came for the students and freedom of speech. Then they came for artistic expression and painted over murals. Then they came for the land and environment, and bulldozed over a nature preserve." Tamara Solum commented.

President Richard Corcoran could not be reached for comment.