Ron DeSantis tried to make a Florida college conservative. Now the students are fleeing.

BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml to politics @lemmy.world – 656 points –
Ron DeSantis tried to make a Florida college conservative. Now the students are fleeing.
lgbtqnation.com
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Conservatives don’t want to go to any college these days, and no liberal kid wants to be associated with this wacky school. You’ve made a product with no demographic, congrats Ron.

Somehow he’s an even worse businessman than Trump, the fuck?

The goal was to destroy an LGBTQ+ refuge, which they have done.

The only school closure baby dick would care about is a private Christian conservative charter school; even then he probably wouldn't give a shit unless it impacted his children or he could exploit it for personal gain...

Are you telling me he's going to become President of the United States of America?

That hit me in the feels. Can’t even call it a sucker punch because we’ve seen the writing on the wall since fdr.

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There are always the religious colleges which they support. I was dragged on tours of a few of them with my church group in high school, they're super weird and clearly feel like isolated bubbles even on the tours which are supposed to make them appear normal to potential students.

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Can you really blame him though?

Think about it...

Normal schools turn kids into well educated socialists, so what does that leave for the conservatives? He just wants a school that will turn kids into uneducated selfish assholes like him!

He just wants a school that will turn kids into uneducated selfish assholes like him!

Believe it or not, that take is actually more flattering to him than the actual truth is. Here's a relevant sentence from his wikipedia page:

DeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A., magna cum laude.

He's not uneducated. He understands what he's doing. He is consciously and intentionally trying to deny other people the same opportunities he received. He's doing this because he believes it will benefit him politically.

To quote Full Metal Jacket, Ron DeSantis is "the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the god damned courtesy of giving him a reacharound."

As Shulman said "You did read the book!"

What a bastard, he knows what he is doing.

He's doing this because he believes it will benefit him politically.

AKA, make him the King of Florida for the rest of his life.

He just wants a school that will turn kids into uneducated selfish assholes like him!

No, he wants obedient worker slaves. Just smart enough to know how to follow orders and what will happen if they choose to disobey.

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He still succeeded in removing a liberal college.

It's the kids that wanted an education from a normal school that are getting hurt

DeSantis is now using more public funds to push conservative christian "education". If kids who want to go to a religious school enroll here, this is a win for the christian right

And unfortunately the state of Florida is suffering a brain drain because of that, along with a drain of low income immigrant workers.

Somehow, I get the feeling he doesn't really give two fucks, though. I mean, he won't until the barbarians (us) are at the gate.

I think you are missing the important part here. The school now has a football, baseball, and that other kind of football, team. It doesn't actually have facilities or fields for any of these activities, but what matters is that now they can give scholarships for students in these vital academic pursuits.

The reason it's important that even Americans should know what "liberal" actually means, at least in context, is exactly statements like this one.

A "liberal college" is a college that teaches "liberal arts."

Language studies, history, psychology, writing, philosophy, etc.

It is not a political designation. Sure, they're probably going to trend left, both American and actual, because of all the gathered knowledge and empathy, but this is exactly why letting "liberal" to be a synonym for "Democrat" is a mistake.

You've got people, unironically, in these comments talking about him replacing a "liberal college with a conservative one."

He didn't replace anything. He just sabotaged a school.

I wasn't really using it as a political designation, I was referring to that it is a free and open thinking college. One where right wing views could be freely aired alongside left wing. I'm aware that it has adopted something of a political meaning also, but I don't really like that bastardisation, particularly as it sometimes seems to be almost the opposite of the common meaning of the word.

The college was free and open, now it isn't. The college hasn't exactly been removed, but you could remove it from a list of colleges like that, which is sort of the meaning I was going for.

I'd love it if you took your argument to hexbear though lol. That would properly get them riled up. Don't do it though, they're not worth your time.

In a free market, when a service provider changes their product, customers are not in fact obliged to treat it as the same as the old version.

Wasn't this the goal from the start though? Change the curriculum, get the 'woke' kids to leave, replace them with conservative kids who get to trade on whatever reputation the school still has. Because their previous approach of starting Christian universities from scratch (eg. Liberty University) has failed when it comes to giving alumni decent job prospects outside the conservative sphere.

I can’t wait for this pathetic shitcunt to fuck off into obscurity.

His wet noodly ass will be forgotten shortly after the election. 2025 can't come soon enough.

yup, I can't wait for him to quit being on the news. hopefully the next Florida gov will do better

conservative science and history is just a church. The sun orbits the earth etc, god created the world in 7 literal days. Its not useful.

The reality is if people want a church they can go to them but nobody wants to go to those either because in america your status is determined by your money and church is a money loser.

That's not entirely true. There have been many very scientifically successful religious universities. That said, MAGA Christians are not the type that would create a free thinking institution.

That's somewhat true but christian colleges are often unwilling to look into scientific pursuits that may damage their faith's view on the sciences. They have made contributions, but are always limited in their scope and often publish inaccurate studies supporting their particular world view.

And sometimes such schools rebel, like all of the Duke foundation schools, although admittedly Furman was dragged kicking and screaming by its students (and lucky got two surprise and astonishing endowments right after, basically fuck-you levels of money).

It's also worth pointing out that those colleges already exist and have a track record. When it's a choice between and , people generally will go with the known establishment.

Pissing away money at a school where the governor can and has cut a program or class on a whim would be undesirable to any prospective student.

Yep. Didn't even know that Transylvania University was a Disciples of Christ funded College (We don't have any terminal degree programs, since UK took them when it was founded) until my Sophomore year. Only found out then, cause I was student working in the accounting office.

You're running with a shit crew if they value you based on your income

The US can be described as a "shit crew" so this checks out.

L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, Joel Olsteen have entered the chat

I should clarify, being a member at a church is a money loser. Being cult leader is fucking profitable.

Ah, got you, the clarification is the key.

Well, this is to be expected. When the GOP comes, the brain flees.

Everything he does backfires terribly. He's running Florida further into the ground. Frankly, except for the innocents harmed (students and minorities and the like), let it burn. The people of Florida elected a monster. They get what they deserve.

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DeSantis as he's being hoisted: "what's my petard doing here?"

Unless the entire goal is to make the population too fucking ignorant to understand what he's taking from them.

Seems successful to me.

See also Lee Atwater, Southern Strategy

If this were reddit, we'd have people replying to tell you that that never happened, and that the Republicans are, "The Party of Lincoln"™

^*This^ ^comment^ ^is^ ^sponsored^ ^in^ ^part^ ^by:^ ^the^ ^2024^ ^Lincoln^ ^Navigator.^ ^Lincoln.^ ^What^ ^a^ ^luxury^ ^car^ ^should^ ^be.^

In my state’s sub, you’d have the (Dixie)*crats joining them.

  • Corrected formatting i hope

Yeah

When you take the parties away and just think about who did and didn't support the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (or 1964, Voting Rights Act, etc., it becomes clear who's on which side.

I was alive when Strom Thurmond died. I remember it. That dude was a hardcore GOP Republican until the day he died. The openly racist man who filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and literally changed his party affiliation based on where each one stood on whether or not black people should be seen as people.

We all know what party he chose, and it doesn't sound like Lincoln's values to me.

Tbf Lincoln opined that if continuing slavery were to spare the Union, he would be fully onboard.

Lincoln was a complicated man, and politics is complicated...

But yeah, by today's standards he was probably still pretty shitty.

Supposedly the Bible that he had purported to have turned to during his cancer fight was found in its original packaging, untouched.

I did a temporary research position at New College about a decade ago. It was such an awesome little University with great faculty and a great student body. The recent developments due to this clown saddens me so much.

Well then he HAS made the college conservative if the studsnts are fleeing, opening up the space for their preferred students. Headline makes it sound like he failed.

Exactly. It’s the entire point. He want all those liberal voters gone. It doesn’t matter if only a fraction of students stay. If those are all conservatives the county the college is in has turned solid red.

Sadly, the article is mistaken (in terms of “failing”). They started an athletics program where none existed before, so they more than made up for lost academic students and replaced them with student athletes. New enrollment spiked so high, in fact, that hey actually had a housing shortage due to too many students, and had to provide emergency housing off campus in local hotels.

His plan worked for its intended purpose- to scare away any LQBTG identifying (or even LQBTQ tolerating) students and staff, and replace them with less tolerant people.

At some point (potentially not for years) one would think degrees from colleges like this one (plus places like Liberty, Bob Jones, etc) in a lot of fields would be greatly depreciated.

I wouldn't hire someone from one of these places if I saw it on a resume