Americans are fed up with “wokeness.”
The Left thought they could go to the political fringes without any consequences.
But a big announcement from a rust belt college just proved Ron DeSantis right.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared that his state was “where ‘woke’ goes to die” during his re-election speech.
And one of his stated goals was to turn New College, a floundering public university in Sarasota, into the “Hillsdale of the South” as DeSantis’ Chief of Staff put it.
The move struck the right tone with Floridians and Americans more broadly who, more and more, have witnessed what left-wing control of education has wrought on the country and are looking for alternative schools free from radical politics.
Conservative college sees rising enrollment
Now, growing enrollment numbers from Hillsdale – a conservative Michigan school – seem to back that up, even as the U.S. Census Bureau reports that college enrollment is down 13%.
The news comes amid growing, costly attacks, and cancel mobs have taken hold on many campuses nationwide in recent years.
The University of California at Berkeley estimated it spent some $600,000 when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro spoke on campus, the New York Times reported of just one event back in 2017.
It’s not clear whether that high cost was the result of corruption, disregard for how dollars are spent by UC Berkeley, flat-out corruption, or whether that’s just how out of hand activists on campus have become.
But many Americans suspect the latter and see it as tied to the ideologies promoted in modern American schools.
Media apologists may claim otherwise but you can’t chalk that up to what they viewed as justifiable Trump-era rage of “the resistance” because Ben Shapiro has never been exactly the hugests Donald Trump backer.
The same goes for author Charles Murray, who triggered a mob not long after at Middlebury College that resulted in a professor getting violently attacked.
Such attacks and out-of-control cancel mobs may be why Hillsdale College in Michigan—one of a handful of unabashedly conservative universities—is seeing growth.
Hillsdale applications rose by 53% last year.
It appears Ron DeSantis was early spotting the trend, and seized on the chance to make a change at Florida’s New College – a school that was on the brink of having its doors shuttered and assets sold off.
But since New College is a public school under the purview of the state, DeSantis was able to appoint a new board to help right the ship.
He tapped education reformer Christopher Rufo – a conservative School Choice advocate who’s gained notoriety in conservative circles for exposing Critical Race Theory and other neo-Marxist concepts being pushed in schools – as one of the new board members.
New College, like so many institutions, had been completely captured by the Left under school president Patricia Okkerand.
Leftist faulty members attempted to get a town hall meeting featuring Rufo shut down due to anonymous threats.
However, Rufo and the new board members voted to continue with the talk.
Ultimately, Rufo and the board determined Okkerand needed to go and recently followed through, voting to remove her.
Rising enrollment and Hillsdale College shows conservative approaches can succeed in higher education.
DeSantis is out to show public universities and colleges can be reformed too with the right political will and leadership.
If DeSantis is ultimately successful, he will offer a blueprint for red state governors to restore some balance to the public universities.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
