Corcoran promotes sports over critical New College needs (again)
Last week, a one million dollar donation to New College of Florida was made public. Carlos Beruff, a millionaire real estate developer gave the donation for naming rights to a baseball stadium, to be called the “Beruff Family Field of Dreams”. This was for naming rights only. The money for a stadium, and a plan for one does not yet exist, nor is one included in the college master plan so whether a stadium is, in fact, ever built may be the real dream here.
A comment made at the Board of Trustees meeting today indicated that the donation would be used for “sports” at the college. This despite many other critical needs at the college.
Students are still being housed in hotels, the modular dorm rooms are uninhabitable because of mold issues. The library roof is still leaking, but there’ll be a million dollars for “sports”. Is this what an honors college in desperate need of programmatic and infrastructure improvements really needs?
I, and others were scheduled to make our public comments in the one-minute slots we were given at today’s Board of Trustees meeting.
Representative of the chaos and mismanagement of the New College of Florida administration and Board of Trustees, commenters were sent invalid Zoom links for the meeting. We had to scramble to find working access to the meeting and were only just barely able to get our comments in. Another alum’s comment was cut off because the BoT falsely claimed her comment did not address the issue on the agenda.
All typical of the chaotic, incompetent manner in which the usurpers conduct themselves and their approach to running NCF.
Here’s the statement I made at the BoT meeting:
“It's unfortunate that President Corcoran has treated this board with such disrespect regarding this donation.
President Corcoran made a public announcement about the naming of this stadium, before this board even had a chance to discuss and vote as required by regulations. Why didn’t he wait one more weekday?
Because your approval is taken for granted. You are expected to be a rubber stamp for whatever President Corcoran wants.
This board never reviewed nor approved a baseball stadium project in the first place. There's no approved budget for a stadium. You haven't approved a campus master plan that includes a baseball stadium.
That’s bad governance.
It's your job as Trustees to give oversight. President Corcoran overstepped his authority by announcing a decision ahead of time without this board's approval as required.
And look, he needs the oversight - remember the big announcement for the Ricketts Great Books College - and that has since gone nowhere. We don't need another costly embarrassment like that.
And please confirm the terms of the gift agreement before approving - we don't want the money spent this year, and then the Foundation gets hit with a huge bill to fund a stadium because this donation is already gone.
Thank you.”
Bill Rosenberg, NC ‘73-‘80, President, NCAA 2005-2008, President, Novo Collegian Alliance
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