Florida College Throws Hundreds of LGBTQ Books in a Dumpster
New College of Florida has suspended a dean after the library disposed of books dealing with LGBTQ issues, race, and gender.
Shannon Hausinger, New College of Florida’s dean of the library, has been placed on administrative leave after the once-progressive institution was slammed for throwing books about racism, diversity, LGBTQ topics, and gender-related issues into a trash dumpster.
A video of the dumpster being driven to a landfill went viral online. The footage appeared to show books that have been deemed by critics as “woke” for their content, including a book on the Hebrew language, a book about women’s bodies, and the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds, and various titles about Black culture.
New College also disposed of materials from the college’s now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center, which housed a student-curated library of books, including texts about the LGBTQ community, Black culture, and gender-related issues.
Last week, New College spokesperson Nathan March took umbrage at reporting by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, claiming that assertions the college was disposing of books haphazardly were false.
“A library needs to regularly review and renew its collection to ensure its materials are meeting the current needs of students and faculty,” he told the newspaper in a statement. “The images seen online of a dumpster of library materials is related to the standard weeding process.”
The university has claimed that, since gender studies has been discontinued as an area of study at New College, the books from the Gender and Diversity Center — which were not part of the regular library culling process — had been moved to a book drop location by the college library, just feet from the dumpster, “where they were later claimed by individuals planning to donate the books locally.”
Last week, March also claimed that the books could not be sold or donated due to Florida Statute 273, a law seeking to ban public funding of diversity programs at state colleges and universities. It was pushed through by Republican lawmakers and signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
However, the law states that such books could be sold or transferred to any governmental entities, nonprofit agencies, or individuals “through a sale open to the public.”
In the past, if the library needed to make space by removing old or outdated books, students would typically be notified and allowed to claim or purchase the books for their personal use. But students told the Herald-Tribune that they weren’t notified about the pending disposal — which occurred two weeks before they were set to return to campus for the fall semester.
When approached about Hausinger’s status on Monday, March told the newspaper that the dean had been placed on leave “after discovering that the library did not follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials.”
New College President Richard Corcoran criticized the media coverage of the book disposal.
“Unfortunately, much of the coverage has been sensationalized, catering to the narratives of our critics,” Corcoran said in a statement. “While the optics of seeing thousands of books in a dumpster are far from ideal, it is important to understand that the disposition of materials is a necessary process in libraries.”
Corcoran’s statement was undercut by a social media post from Christopher Rufo, a conservative anti-“woke” activist who was one of several New College trustees appointed by DeSantis as part of several efforts to remake the school from a progressive-leaning institution into a proving ground for conservative ideology.
“We abolished the gender studies program,” Rufo trumpeted, attaching a picture of the books in the dumpster. “Now we’re throwing out the trash.”
Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, called the book disposal “an intentional act of censorship.”
“These actions are nothing short of a cultural purge, reminiscent of some of history’s darkest times, where regimes sought to control thought by burning books and erasing knowledge,” Jackson said in a statement to NBC News.
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