Daily Outtakes: Pensacola cares about UWF

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The most read posts on the blog this week concerned the future of the University of West Florida. Has Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chosen his appointments to the Board of Trustees to curry favor with the Heritage Foundation and create another New College that will fit the his political agenda.

1. Sign Petition: Show Solidarity with UWF Leadership The new Univesity of West Florida Board of Trustees holds its first meeting on Thursday, Jan. 23, at 10 a.m. Most of the new picks have little or no relationship with the university or the community. We know what happened at the New College of Florida. Inweekly will not sit silently and watch history repeat on Jan. 23. Read more.

2. Daily Outtakes: Will Yenor support a female UWF president? New University of West Florida board trustee Scott Yenor believes in national conservatism and sees independent women as “a fundamental threat to strong, fruitful families” and our national prosperity and stability. Those beliefs put him out of step with Pensacola, Escambia County and most of the United States. Read more.

3. Daily Outtakes: DeSantis broke promises made to the UWF and community When he announced his appointees to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees, Gov. Ron DeSantis betrayed the public trust by ignoring the promises made in 2001 when the board was formed. The University of West Florida Board of Trustees was established to give the local community more control over the university and strengthen the bond between UWF and Northwest Florida. Read more.

4. Pay Attention: 2nd Anniversary of New College experiment On Jan. 6, 2023, Gov. DeSantis appointed six new members to New College’s 13-member Board of Trustees, effectively packing the board with conservative allies. A seventh would join their ranks before the month was out, giving DeSantis a governing majority on the board without any prior warning or consultation with the existing college administration.

Six new trustees appeared on the scene like characters in a carefully orchestrated play. Christopher Rufo, the anti-Critical Race Theory crusader whose Twitter feed read like a manifesto against the modern academy. Matthew Spalding was imported from Hillsdale College like a philosophical Special Forces operator. The cast was rounded out with lawyers, think tank fellows, and true believers in DeSantis’s transformation agenda—
which would become a tenet of his failed presidential campaign. Only one, attorney Debra Jenks, was a New College alum.

DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier told the media, “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.” Read more.

5. Do not only focus on UWF Trustee Scott Yenor Gov. Ron DeSantis’s appointment of controversial Boise State professor Scott Yenor has garnered statewide and national attention. However, Yenor isn’t the only Trustee with ties to the Heritage Foundation. Check out Adam Kissell from West Virginia will have a vote at the UWF Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 23. Read more.

6. UWF has excelled in meeting Florida’s performance metrics The University of West Florida (UWF) has shown significant improvement in recent years, according to the Florida Board of Governors’ performance-based funding metrics. In the first year (2016) of the metrics, UWF ranked at the bottom with only 57 points. The next year, the university jumped to 82 points.

In the 2023-24 performance-based funding model, UWF earned a total of 84 points out of 100, which is two points higher than the previous year. Read more.

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Daily Outtakes: Pensacola cares about UWF

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