Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a new way to enrage liberals: Baseball.
On Wednesday, the far-left magazine The Nation reported on the new athletics program at New College of Florida, the Florida State University System’s smallest school.
New College, in Sarasota, was the site of an educational revolution earlier this year, after DeSantis gave conservatives a majority among the trustees by appointing six new members, including journalist Christopher Rufo, a leader in exposing liberal “diversity, equity, and inclusion” schemes.
One change at the school has been to introduce a sports program, which had never existed at New College.
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Recently, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics unanimously accepted New College as one of its members. New College will join other small Florida schools such as Southeastern University, Warner University, Webber International University, and Ave Maria University in the NAIA.
Yet, as The Nation saw it, giving New College students a shot at playing baseball was “a green light for far-right takeovers of institutions beyond Sarasota.”
“The creation of a New College athletic department has been one of the school’s top priorities since Governor Ron DeSantis decided to crush and remake the institution to match his own image: a far-right authoritarian with a penchant for baseball,” The Nation huffed.
The magazine noted that as the school was adding the national pastime to campus, it was also: firing liberal professors; shutting down the gender studies department; eliminating its DEI workforce; “forcing out” liberal students; painting over political murals; preventing student orientation leaders from wearing Black Lives Matter or Pride pins; and eliminating gender-neutral bathrooms.
“The far-right extremists in charge are using sports to overhaul the ideology of the student body,” The Nation alleged.
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Its proof is that the new athletics department is adding a “staggering” 115 new student-athletes to augment the 700 students already on campus.
According to The Nation, 70 of those athletes will be baseball players, which means New College will have almost twice as many baseball players as the University of Florida.
The Nation also seemed to engage in a bit of conspiracy-theory-mongering:
“This is not about sports, and this definitely isn’t about giving student athletes the chance at a college education. This is about DeSantis’s state government sending millions in taxpayer money to New College so they can purchase a right-wing student body through athletic scholarships to replace those students they have driven out.”
“They are building an athletics department at a school of just 700 people so they can throw money at athletes coming largely from Christian private schools to play for an athletic director and coaches of similar right-wing, religious bents.”
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