By Daniel Ducassi, FloridaBulldog.org
Militant anti-DEI activist Christopher Rufo is on the path to a trial in Florida state court over allegations he and other board members of New College of Florida illegally withheld records documenting their ideological takeover of the school in 2023.
Rufo, New College and other board members named in the lawsuit seem to be fighting an uphill battle after a key player admitted to destroying records and a judge shot down the school’s legal arguments for why they were refusing to turn over certain records. Twelfth Circuit Judge Stephen Walker in February pointed to Rufo’s own behavior as undermining what the school’s legal team has asserted.
Rufo has become a leading ideological figure in the rising right-wing assault on colleges and universities and a key influencer of White House education policy. The trial could expose some of the tactics he and allies used in this early battle – and to what lengths those in the vanguard of the movement are willing to go to impose their agenda.
The case could also shed light on how the hostile takeover of New College in Sarasota actually unfolded, and what role Gov. Ron DeSantis played behind-the-scenes as he publicly championed the coup. Beyond that, it could confirm suspicions about secret coordination by board members in defiance of state open meetings laws as they quickly moved to axe the school’s president, Dr. Patricia Okker, and replace her with former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran.
The new board then forged ahead with a series of controversial decisions aimed at remaking the school, giving Corcoran a $1-million salary to lead the school of fewer than a thousand students, eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and dismantling the school’s gender studies program.
DeSantis held a press conference alongside Rufo on Jan. 31, 2023, where the governor laid out the justification for revamping a state university that he argued had lost its way, lamenting what he viewed as the school’s left-leaning political tilt.
“The mission has been, I think, more into the DEI, [Critical Race Theory], the gender ideology, rather than what a liberal arts education should be,” DeSantis said. The governor also foreshadowed the drastic changes that would soon come with his new slate of trustees: “They have a board meeting later today in Sarasota, which will be very, very interesting.”
The Florida Center for Government Accountability (FLCGA), a government transparency watchdog group, filed a series of public records lawsuits against Rufo and various other DeSantis trustees of the college in 2023 in an effort to get the school to cough up records about the transition.
“We believe those records in those early weeks and following the DeSantis appointments will reveal what they planned to do and what they executed,” said Michael Barfield, public access director for the center.
The litigation is now coming to a boil, with a one-day trial scheduled for June 10 that could lead to a ruling that public records were unlawfully withheld and must be turned over.
WHAT’S COME OUT SO FAR
The group requested text messages, as well as logs that documented text messages and phone calls, for Rufo and various other trustees for most of January 2023, ahead of the first New College of Florida Board of Trustees meeting after the wave of DeSantis appointments.
At first, the FLCGA said it received nothing from the college, leading it to file actions in court to block the school and trustees from destroying the records.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in May 2023 that documents unearthed as a result of the litigation early on showed New College alumnus Robert Allen, an attorney who specializes in legal issues involving yachts, acted as a liaison between the governor’s office and the new trustees, asserting that he was the architect for the takeover.
The trickle of records also showed the involvement of Alex Kelly, then deputy chief of staff to DeSantis, in communicating with the new trustees. Kelly also previously served as chief of staff to Corcoran when he was Florida Commissioner of Education under DeSantis.
But the details of exactly what happened, and who was talking to whom about what, have been difficult to unravel, with depositions indicating records have already been destroyed.
New College of Florida, represented by former Florida Senate President Bill Galvano, contends that records created before the trustees signed their oaths of office aren’t public, even after they were already named publicly as trustees. For example, Rufo and the other trustees were all appointed on Jan. 6, but Rufo signed his oath of office on Jan. 31.
But Judge Walker was unconvinced, finding in February that legal interpretation was “overly broad, which leads to ultimately an unavailing argument.”
‘OVER THE WALLS’
Instead, the judge pointed to evidence that their official terms began on Jan. 6, 2023. The judge noted Jan. 6 posts on X by Rufo boasting about the impending takeover of the college, among other examples of Rufo and another trustee purporting to take official action as trustees before signing their oaths.
“We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within,” Rufo wrote in a post on X on Jan. 6. “Under the leadership of Governor DeSantis, our all-star board will demonstrate that the public universities, which have been corrupted by woke nihilism, can be recaptured, restructured, and reformed.”
Rufo also posted a video to X, cited in the court record, showing him insisting he had the full powers of a trustee on Jan. 25 during a heated verbal argument with the then-provost. The provost at the time was trying to stop a meeting Rufo had organized on Jan. 25 due to an email threatening violence.
“We just took a vote of the board, the board votes 2-to-1,” Rufo insisted, commanding that the show would go on. Rufo even claimed to have a quorum of the 13-member board, even though the school’s regulations specify seven members as the minimum necessary to take official action as the board. The school did give official public notice of the meeting and recorded minutes, though there’s no mention of any vote on any matter during the meeting.
“There is certainly a suggestion that post-appointment, pre-oath, that the individuals that are the target of the request for this disclosure under the [Public Records] Act were acting or communicating or holding themselves out as individuals who had the ability to act on behalf of New College,” Judge Walker said.
The case has yielded several depositions of board members, including one in which the chair of the board seemingly admitted to destroying records at the heart of the case.
Judge Walker found New College board chair Debra Jenks, a lawyer who described herself as a friend of Allen’s, was “being evasive” in her deposition. The judge noted she refused to answer questions about whether there were records before her official oath date but after her appointment.
‘I DON’T PRESERVE RECORDS’
Further, Jenks said in her deposition that she frequently deleted messages, sometimes daily.
“No, I don’t preserve records,” Jenks said when asked if she kept records of her messages from January 2023, records that were part of the FLCGA request.
State law requires preservation of requested records – even if what was requested is claimed not to be public – if a lawsuit is filed within 30 days or if the record is indeed public after all.
Part of the records FLCGA requested, and are included as part of the lawsuit, are Jenks’s text messages from January 2023, along with logs of her messages and phone calls.
Despite her legal training and instruction as a trustee on public records law, Jenks struggled to explain what constitutes a public record.
“Anything that is supposed to be, you know, in the sunshine, right, those communications would be – you know, could be considered a public record,” Jenks stated.
New College has also argued that phone logs cannot be public records, but Judge Walker stated in February that testimony by Jenks and a school official shows why call logs could be critical to figuring out if there was unlawful withholding of public records.
“We have witnesses that are saying that they delete things and there was no effort to preserve certain things,” Judge Walker said. Further, he said it raises questions about whether there was a reasonable effort to actually look for records, a requirement under the state’s public records law.
Barfield said Rufo has so far not provided a single record in response to the requests. But Barfield said the FLCGA is planning to depose Rufo as well as put him on the stand in June.
TRUSTEE COLLUSION?
Part of what the FLCGA is trying to unravel is if trustees were colluding privately to take public action.
“We certainly want information on the mystery of how these things occurred when they denied speaking with each other,” Barfield said. He pointed to indications from the former president herself, who stated at the Jan. 31 meeting that she was told she would be fired if she didn’t accept an agreement to resign.
Further, Barfield said there were questions around the appointment of Corcoran.
“How did a majority of trustees settle on Mr. Corcoran being president without really any discussion or vetting whatsoever?” Barfield asked.
Corcoran said in a phone call with Florida Bulldog that the only person he spoke with about being named interim president ahead of the Jan. 31 meeting was Matthew Spalding, a DeSantis-appointed trustee and administrator at Hillsdale College, where Rufo also serves as a fellow. Hillsdale is listed on the advisory board for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan to dramatically transform the federal government in favor of right-wing policies.
The conservative institution has also served as an inspiration for the new board’s vision of the new New College.
In his deposition, Spalding described Corcoran as “a friend of mine” that he’s known for 20 years, and said he didn’t speak with any other trustees about the appointment ahead of the meeting.
Corcoran sounded agitated when asked if he spoke with anyone in the governor’s office about the appointment, claiming he’d already answered the question even though he had only been asked about his communications with trustees. Corcoran then denied speaking with anyone in the governor’s office about his appointment, before stating, “I don’t even know why I’m answering these questions,” and attempting to refer the reporter to the school’s public relations office.
“All these questions have been asked and answered, ad nauseum,” Corcoran said, before insisting he was “not worked up, not worked up.”
When asked why the school was so adamant about keeping certain records secret, Corcoran said he would speak to Galvano about it.
Corcoran and Galvano did not respond to written follow-up questions asking about the school’s resistance to providing the records and how much money the school has spent on the case so far.
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