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UWF students rally against newly-appointed Board of Trustees

Jennie McKeon
/
WUWF Public Media

A few hundred students from the University of West Florida gathered on the Pensacola campus Tuesday to protest Governor Ron DeSantis’ recent appointments to the university’s Board of Trustees, and to stop what they call “a far-right takeover” of the university.

The event focused in part on calling for the ouster of Scott Yenor as chairman of the Board of Trustees. Yenor, one of eight recent DeSantis appointees, is a political science professor affiliated with the conservative Claremont Institute.

“It’s really scary,” said student organizer Sol Alfonso, in reference to Yenor’s chairmanship. Alfonso, a junior at UWF, is a member of the UWF Students for Socialism, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which was on hand to offer support.

RELATED: UWF Board of Trustees elects new leadership

“His rhetoric is all about women shouldn’t be encouraged to go into STEM. And you know as a trans individual majoring in electrical engineering, that’s really scary to hear, you know for my fellow trans people and women. He’s very anti-LGBTQ and is truly very far right.”

Jennie McKeon
/
WUWF Public Media

“We are hoping that this rally and other things that we’re gonna do after this are gonna put pressure on the university so that they can take him off the chair and replace him with somebody who isn’t as right-wing,” Alfonso said.

Sarah Reed, a UWF alum, staff member, and part-time professor, said she attended the protest to stand up for herself, for women and her queer students.

“Most of our workforce; my office is mostly women,” she began, countering Yenor’s known stance that women in the workplace has led to the decline of family life.

“Women should do whatever they want to do,” said Reed, who noted that she is married. “For me, that means getting my Master’s degree and teaching at a college and having a career.”

Students who attended the protest on Cannon Green near the UWF Library took part in various chants and held up signs that read “Hands off our schools,” “We won’t go back, we will fight back,” and “Proud medicated, Meddlesome, quarrelsome woman,”
referencing a comment Yenor made in a 2021 speech at the National Conservatism Conference.

Jennie McKeon
/
WUWF Public Media

“Having such a toxic, volatile person at the helm of our great university, flaws and all, we are headed down a dark path of greater and greater exclusion,” said social work major Honor Mosely Bell III, president of Students for Socialism. He also happens to be a grandson of Honor Bell, who was a charter member of the UWF Board of Trustees.

Bell called for a working-class movement. “We are workers, we are immigrants, we are Muslims,” they said, calling for solidarity.

Sophomore Giovanni Nudo was part of a group of political science students who were sent over to observe the student protest.

“I think it’s kind of unnecessary politicization,” said Nudo about the governor’s new appointments. “I think the idea of ‘woke’ poisoning of our schools is kind of just turning on its head with Ron DeSantis doing it instead....I just think it’s pure politics and it’s not going to help us.”

Nudo said he was supportive of the effort to do something about the conservative appointees to the UWF Board of Trustees, but added that he was skeptical that the student movement would be taken seriously.

Attempts to reach the UWF Board of Trustees liaison were unsuccessful.

Sandra Averhart has been News Director at WUWF since 1996. Her first job in broadcasting was with (then) Pensacola radio station WOWW107-FM, where she worked 11 years. Sandra, who is a native of Pensacola, earned her B.S. in Communication from Florida State University.