On a Tuesday evening in February, a handful of students at Florida’s only public liberal arts college gathered in a classroom, not for a lecture, but for a lifeline. The event, hosted by the socialist feminist publication Lux Magazine, was a deliberate attempt to carve out a “safe space” on a campus that has become a national symbol of a conservative overhaul in higher education.
A Magazine Tour as a Counter-Movement
The tour, which has also visited campuses in Iowa and Texas, is a direct response to a sweeping trend. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 445 campuses across 48 states and Washington D.C. have altered diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies or academics due to state legislation over the past three years. Lux, a magazine named after Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg and founded in 2021 by editor-in-chief Sarah Leonard, aims to show Black, brown, queer, feminist, and trans students that supportive adults have their backs.
“We found that while some of these issues were being covered in the media, often student voices were not at the center of those stories,” said Leonard, whose writing has appeared in outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian. Her magazine’s approach is framed as a conscious flip of the aggressive “debate me” style of campus tours led by conservative figures like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. Instead, Lux seeks to create a forum for marginalised students to strategise and connect.
Ground Zero in Sarasota
The venue for this particular evening, New College of Florida in Sarasota, was once celebrated as the state university system’s most progressive and queer-friendly campus. That changed decisively in 2023. Less than a year after Governor Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, he forced a conservative shift at New College by appointing six new trustees to its board.
One was Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a prominent architect of the backlash against critical race theory. Rufo, who has described his ambition as transforming New College into a “classical college” free from “political ideology” like DEI, is currently facing a trial over allegations of illegally withholding public records related to the takeover. The board appointed a new president, DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran, who had no prior higher education experience.
The changes were swift and profound. The board ousted the college’s female president and multiple LGBTQ+ staffers, voted to disband the gender studies department, and announced an intention to “de-feminize” a student body that, like higher education nationally, skewed majority female. To drive up enrollment, the administration recruited male student athletes, a move that reportedly caused the average GPA of the incoming 2023 freshman class to fall sharply.
The cultural shift was symbolised by the replacement of the school’s quirky “null set” mascot with the “Mighty Banyans,” illustrated with a muscular tree named Rooty. This was a stark contrast to the campus’s past, where students had once organised a tree-saving protest named after a Dr. Seuss character; now, trees were being demolished for a new baseball field.
The Human Cost of Transformation
The result was a mass exodus. In the fall of 2023, over 100 students—roughly an eighth of the student body—transferred out. Forty per cent of professors left, replaced by hires that included a “presidential scholar in residence” who once authored a paper titled *The Case for Colonialism*.
For students who remained, like LGBTQ+ club president Nya Jacobson, the atmosphere became one of isolation and defeat. “This place is a lost cause,” said Jacobson, a senior struggling to find someone to take over the club after they graduate. They described a more reserved, atomized student body, and faced finishing their degree with few professors left in their department.
Newer students, like junior Lane Hagan, found their expectations shattered. Hagan, who grew up in rural Florida, had been told by their mother, a New College alumna, that they would finally find a community of open-minded peers and professors. Instead, Hagan encountered a professor who made offensive “blue hair and pronouns” jokes about liberals during class. “I kind of expected to come here and get even more gay looking, and to express myself even more,” Hagan said. “I feel like it’s gone in the other direction.” They stopped dyeing their hair, a practice since age 12.
The climate of fear was palpable at the Lux event. Students were so beaten down, organisers reported, that one was unsure if protesting was even legal. “Students are scared to get involved, to invite groups like us,” said Lux campus tour organiser Noella Williams. “We’re just a magazine.”
The Broader Florida Landscape
The transformation of New College is not an isolated academic matter but part of a wave of legislation in Florida. The state has seen a significant increase in anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including bans on transgender women and girls participating in school sports, restrictions on bathroom use, and limitations on pronoun use in public schools. The “Don’t Say Gay” law itself was expanded in 2023 to cover all grades through to year 12.
In March 2026, the “Anti-Diversity in Local Government” bill passed, designed to intimidate municipalities supporting diverse communities. This political environment prompted Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy network, to issue a travel advisory in April 2023 warning of potential risks for LGBTQ+ people in the state.
The pattern extends to other institutions. Florida A&M University (FAMU), the state’s only public historically Black university and Williams’ alma mater, recently announced it was “consolidating” its African American studies program.
Finding a Way Forward
Against this backdrop, the Lux event aimed to provide practical hope. Speakers included Jules Rayne, Equality Florida’s only statewide trans organiser and founder of the Florida Transgender Alliance, and Sarah Parker, a national coordinator for the 50501 movement—a progressive grassroots group born on Reddit to organise nationwide protests.
Rayne offered both solidarity and a reminder of victories: “Last year, we defeated every anti-LGBTQ+ bill in the state of Florida,” she said, to cheers. She promised organisational support for any student protest. Parker emphasised building power through connection: “Each one of you has a friend. They have a friend. We all have to lock arms and do this together.”
For some, like the graduating Jacobson, the fight for New College feels over. But for newcomers like Luci Pimienta, who had been on campus only weeks, the event was a catalyst. She began doggedly recruiting to start a progressive club, with panellists offering to help find a space if the campus would not allow it.
As the event ended, the Lux team moved on to the University of Iowa, where over 80 students fired up about their own shuttered gender studies program awaited. The magazine doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but for a few hours in a Florida classroom, it offered something students said they desperately lacked: a sense that someone was speaking directly to them, and that they were not alone.
