“We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.” New College of Florida
This is tagged as such, because the act is very much a cancer to a society… to a country… to a world. You cannot take the body of history, study and conclusion and dump it because you don’t feel right about it. You cannot sacrifice, even a small percentage of the world, to hate.
The act, and quote, portrayed in this picture is a precursor to awful things. We, as a species, have been there before. It doesn’t turn out well.
This subject is one that can be discussed without endorsing a party, or candidate, but using a position (no matter how brief it may be) to speak directly to 31 million of you to say that this is wrong is something that can/should be done whenever an opportunity. What is portrayed here will act as a cancer and slowly rot a society until it succumbs.
To all parties/affiliations/candidates/people - Please be better… be understanding and learn about who may be standing next to you.
Don’t repeat the past
- me
Note: The actual event may not be pictured here, but the sentiment and symbolic act is the same. One book, one box, one dumpster is all an abolition of study and knowledge and all in the name of hate
Edit: cleaned up some wording and adding the reference to the VERY REAL story
Some guy in the recycling center is going to be pissed about the chair.
In 2023, the state government of Florida overhauled its board of trustees in an attempt to transform the school into a conservative institution. Since then, nearly 40% of faculty have resigned. New College has the smallest student population in the State University System of Florida with 669 students (2022).
I really feel for the professors. My daughter was applying to Arts colleges last year. New College was at a college fair and was desperately begging for anybody to engage with them. No takers.
This is the small public university that has had a hostile takeover by DeSantis and his cronies, with the explicit purpose of turning it into the “Hillsdale of the South.” Hillsdale is a private conservative Christian college. They’re trying to do that at a publicly funded state college.
Pictures like this always remind me of the quote on the book-burning memorial plaque in Berlin. “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” (“Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”).
Having just watched the original Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man”, about a librarian whose outdated affection for books marks him for execution, I’m feeling sick to my stomach about a government sneering at texts they are about to destroy.
Maybe that’s just me!
Photos like this are going to be in history books.
I’m pretty sure Ray Bradbury wrote a book about this to warn us about something
Wasn’t that fucking Twitter Troll Elon Musk talking some bullshit the other day about how you can tell which side is “bad” because they try to ban speech?
The idea of throwing away education for the simple fact a part of government is afraid of it is truly horrifying…
What the hell did that poor chair do?
new college started out as liberal as fuck. couple of the smartest guys from my high school went there and all the kids were geniuses cooking up crazy psychadelics in their dorm rooms. all classes were pass/fail and didnt rely on testing. the guy who started erowid.org, the premier drug experience website back in the day, was an alum, and he was the special guest at a valentines day rave i went to where everybody had mescaline and 2C-TI crazy shit, fucking legendary. probably the first time i ever met any non-binary sexual spectrum people. crazy how things have changed
I guess they don’t know about digital copies.
I’m surprised they didn’t go full Nazi and light the books on fire.
“Those who seek to ban books are never on the right side of history”
“Nazi stooges like you should try reading books instead of burning them!” - Henry Jones, Sr.
Just to raise awareness - the same crooks who took over the school are now trying to sell off the land illegally to the nearby airport. Convenient right?