Tallahassee, FL – On August 1, five members of the FSU Students for a Democratic Society (FSUSDS) met with FSU President Richard McCullough to discuss the university's stance on and plans for the recently passed HB 999.

HB 999, also known as the “Postsecondary Educational Institutions” bill, was passed in May of this year. The bill blatantly attacks public education in a number of ways, including but not limited to banning instruction related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), subjecting tenured faculty to five year “performance/productivity reviews”, restricting funding for groups based around DEI (such as campus multicultural groups) or social/political activism, and creating a basis for gutting ethnic studies.

FSUSDS had made six attempts to speak with President McCullough since March of this year before finally securing a meeting. The meeting lasted just short of an hour, during which FSUSDS members asked questions regarding the aforementioned provisions in the bill. The questions focused on the university’s plans for protecting “less profitable” majors and the faculty who teach in those departments, protecting identity-based student organizations and their funding, and the university’s plans to increase Black enrollment.

University administration was reluctant to answer any questions regarding HB 999. When presented with the bill’s language, administrators insisted there were “carve outs” for student groups like the Black Student Union and faculty who teach subjects related to DEI, yet could not provide evidence or sources for these claims, even going as far as to imply FSUSDS was drawing their concerns from the “incorrect version of the bill”. When asked how the university plans to prepare for the bill’s implementation, the president stated that they have “been working every day” but could not give evidence of such work or any details of their plans to protect FSU students and faculty.

This is another instance in a long pattern of silence from university administrators across the state on this dangerous bill. While presidents and board of trustees members make no comment and ignore the concerns of their stakeholders, students and faculty are leaving the state at record rates.

“The university is not willing to answer to student or faculty concerns,” said Cas Casanova, president of FSUSDS. “Admin says they have ‘plans in place’ and are ‘working every day’, but students and faculty are making plans to leave the state right now – they are not willing to wait for FSU’s delayed response. We don’t want to just hear words, we want to see action.”

#TallahasseeFL #HB999

On February 28th, House Bill 999 (HB999) was introduced in the Florida Legislature. Officially titled “Postsecondary Educational Institutions”, this bill would drastically change the state of public education in Florida. HB999 explicitly attacks ethnic studies, multicultural student groups, tenured faculty, and more. Ethnic and multicultural studies were only instituted after hard-fought victories by student organizations in the 60's and 70s'. The bill’s proposals will prevent students who face oppression based on their race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation from learning their own history.

According to the bill, university Presidents and the Board of Trustees will work together to implement and enforce it. Because of this, we recognize that Richard McCullough, the FSU President, has an explicit responsibility to FSU’s students: this bill and its implications must be responded to in a public manner.

Public education in Florida has been under attack by DeSantis and his lackeys since his term as Governor began. This bill just puts on paper what has already been happening. Therefore, even if this bill fails, we want to see real change at our university. SDS has three simple demands of the university President and the Board of Trustees: in the interest of the entire student body, we demand that both parties make a commitment to

    • Protecting and expanding FSU's existing ethnic studies, diversity programs, and campus multicultural groups,

    • Increasing Black enrollment and faculty at FSU,

    • Opposing DeSantis and his attempts to attack public education.

SDS has attempted to meet with university officials numerous times and has been met with continual dismissal and derision. Here is a timeline of events:

Friday, February 24th: SDS submitted a request to speak about DeSantis’s proposed cuts to education (pre-HB999) during the allotted public comment time at the FSU Board of Trustees meeting. Comment was cut short due to “time concerns”. Our members were never given a chance to speak.

Monday, March 6th: SDS submitted a virtual formal request to meet with President McCullough (scheduled for March 23rd) to discuss HB999, it’s implications, and the University’s plan to address the bill. Our request never received a response.

Wednesday, March 22nd: SDS dropped a banner from the Student Union building. The text of the banner read: “McCullough, Defy Desantis! Protect D.E.I.”. The banner was taken down by FSU police within ten minutes. We received no response from University admin.

Thursday, March 23rd: SDS marched from Landis Green to Wescott Fountain to meet with President McCullough as requested almost three weeks prior. The doors to the building were locked prior to our arrival and guarded by police. When we forcibly entered the building, we were passed off to the university Provost, Jim Clarke, who refused to give a public statement denouncing the bill – he claimed that the university had “plans in place” to address the bill, but refused to publicize the plans. Local news was present, and they reported that President McCullough vacated campus that day “in the wake of the protest”.

Thursday, April 13th: SDS attended the President’s annual Ice Cream Social, where we finally saw the President face-to-face and demanded he make a statement on HB999. He dodged all questions, stating we [students and admin] are “all on the same side”, but that SDS members were “disrespectful” in our methods. McCullough refused to address our questions regarding our several attempts to meet him (listed above) before passing us off with police escort to the Director of Communications Dennis Schnittker. Schnittker told us on camera that he would “work with university staff to get us a meeting”, but ignored all questions on how soon this meeting could happen.

Wednesday, April 19th: SDS hosted a call/email-in day, inviting students and community members to call the offices of McCullough, the Board of Trustees, and the Director of Communications to request they meet with us and release a statement regarding HB999. Only a handful of calls went through, and all responses were dismissive of student concerns. Most calls received no answer or rang indefinitely. No emails received a response.

It is clear from this semester’s events that President McCullough and the Board of Trustees have no intention of speaking out against this dangerous bill. Despite the fact that it directly threatens members of the University at all levels, they remain silent. Both McCullough and the Board of Trustees have a responsibility to the student body to hear our concerns and make some real, tangible commitments to addressing them. We demand that McCullough and the Board of Trustees make a public statement denouncing the bill. We demand that the University publicize all plans they have to protect FSU’s ethnic studies, multicultural student groups, and faculty tenure. We demand that, even if this bill fails, McCullough and the rest of administration make tangible and immediate plans to increase Black enrollment and fund ethnic studies. We demand FSU admin come out from the shadows and do their jobs.

We will not stop until President McCullough and the Board of Trustees take action.

FSU admin, take a stand!

Oppose education bans!

#TampaFL #HB999

Tallahassee, FL – On Tuesday, March 28, over 100 students held a rally against Florida House Bill 999, at the Skateable Art Park in the city’s Railroad Square. This bill gives the Florida Board of Governors the ability to review curriculum in higher education, review tenure of professors with the power of removal, and provides direction to each university on “removing from its programs any major of minor in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality.” The bill has passed several committees in the Florida House legislature, with no amendments removing these stipulations.

At the protest, led by three Florida chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), student speakers demanded an end to HB 999 and called it a threat to public education. Speakers cited concerns that HB 999 would restrict access to public education for Black, Chicano and native students; threaten the academic freedom of higher education teachers; threaten the right to right to unionize by those professors; and wipe out discussions of racism, sexism, Black history and other multinational contributions to history from their curriculum.

Enya Silva from Tampa Bay SDS said of the bill, “Last year DeSantis passed the ‘Stop WOKE Act’ to limit discussions of race in K12 school and attacked AP African American history. Why did he single out that course specifically? Because he wants to erase Black history. He wants to pretend like the oppression of Black people throughout history never happened. We’ve seen the results of the Stop WOKE Act. AP African American history isn’t taught in Florida. We’ve seen the pictures of emptied bookshelves in schools throughout Florida. When he attacks Black education he attacks all education, and we all suffer the consequences.”

Emily Dorgan of Florida State University SDS noted the bill’s attacks on feminism, stating “HB 999 targets women and gender studies classes as well; courses such as women in literature and feminist ethics are under attack with this legislation. This would be taking us back to a time when women and LGBTQIA+ people were excluded from academia and would be an extreme set-back for gender equality.”

Miffordens Registre from Florida State University Black Men in Medicine said, “Right now, we are seeing these attacks on diversity begin with education. But it'll continue on into the health industry and affect health professionals. We cannot let that happen. We stand with Students for a Democratic Society and your demands!”

Three weeks before, on March 6, students at the University of South Florida protested House Bill 999 and were met with police brutality, of which students captured video footage. Footage of the event shows cops grabbing student protesters, slamming them against walls and the floor, scratching them, groping them, and putting them in chokeholds. Four protesters, now known as the Tampa 4, were arrested, and are now facing a mixture of misdemeanor and felony charges.

Laura Rodriguez, one of the Tampa 4 said, “Shame on [USF President] Rhea Law. You should step down. Shame on [USF Police Chief] Chris Daniel! You should be fired! Make no mistake that the student movement is strong and will only continue to grow in the face of political repression. We are not hiding behind closed doors, we are not sitting idle, we are standing up in the face of repression, in the face of these racist, union-busting bills, and in the face of the university-sanctioned police brutality.”

Kenya Sanchez Torres from the Tampa Bay Community Action Committee said, “We are demanding that the current Hillsborough state attorney picked by Governor Ron DeSantis drop the charges against the Tampa 4. There’s a difference in power dynamics between someone picked by the people and someone appointed by the governor. Governor-appointed State Attorney Susie Lopez is another tool in DeSantis' box to showcase his power. She is not here to protect the rights of our communities. On March 6, students were asking for basic demands to meet their needs – protesting is not a crime. Hence, we demand that Susy Lopez drop the charges.”

Monique Sampson from the Jacksonville Community Action Committee said, “This struggle lives in the memory of the 2020 Justice for George Floyd Uprising. You can bet that these politicians remember that and want us protesters to go away. But when you touch one of us, you touch all of us. We are not going anywhere!”

After SDS’s rally, students marched across the street to join a rally on the other end of Railroad Square, where they heard from other student grassroots organizations, members of Florida university student governments, women’s advocacy groups, veterans, College Democrats, NAACP and National Pan-Hellenic Council chapters, and the president of United Faculty of Florida, Andrew Gothard, and Florida public officials such as the head of the Florida Democratic Party, Nikki Fried.

The action continued further with a march in the rain from Railroad Square to the Florida Board of Governors meeting at Florida A&M University, a public, historically Black university in Florida. Ten organizers went into the meeting and held a silent sit-in demonstration, while the rest of the crowd rallied outside and chanted, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay – Ron DeSantis, go away!”

The Board of Governors, a body of 17 CEOs and experts (14 of whom are appointed by the Florida governor) who oversee the operations of the Florida State University System, later voted to approve a regulation enabling HB 999’s post-tenure review stipulation.

Alivia Kalin of University of North Florida led the crowd in a callout of the Board of Governors shortly before the meeting, as they said, “You want to ban books? To defund DEI programs? To punish teachers for teaching diversity? Shame! Don’t you dare erase religious history, deaf history, and don’t you dare erase disabled history!”

Silva also remarked, “DeSantis calls the teaching of Black history 'indoctrination.' The real indoctrination is teaching a white supremacist vision of history. Not only is it erasing the brutal history of slavery, it’s erasing the valiant efforts of abolitionists to eventually end it. It’s erasing the truth of the Jim Crow South, and all the people who lost their lives in the fight to end segregation. He wants to erase history so that we can’t see how some things haven’t really changed, and that we still live in a very racist society. But we are here to say: Black history is here to stay!”

Even in the wake of the Board of Governors’ decision, and the swift advancement of HB 999 through committee, SDS and its allies refuse to back down. As the rally’s emcee Cas Casanova from FSU SDS reminded the crowd, “every freedom we have now exists because we fought for it,” and as Jason Carles from FSU SDS remarked, “even if HB 999 becomes law, the power we have gained from our education, and the will to fight for that education, can never be taken from us.”

#TallahasseeFL #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #HB999