SARASOTA -- With all the turmoil over changes at New College of Florida since Governor DeSantis installed a new board of trustees earlier this year, even the choice of a school mascot couldn't avoid controversy.

One of the changes under the new board is the creation of several new sports teams, as a way to expand the student body. Thursday's meeting involved discussion of a new mascot for all those new athletes on campus. The school's previous mascots have been a stray dog, and since 1997, a pair of empty brackets, the "null set", a term from mathematics.

Before the board considered the issue, public commenters had fun with the issue. New College alum Mike Sanderson suggested the "Snowflakes," a play on the image of the current student body. But Sanderson, appearing before the board wearing a skirt, insisted that snowflake could denote bravery as well. "Snowflakes stopped Napoleon," Sanderson said, referring to the French emperor's disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia.

Humanities student Anna Lazzara submitted a drawing of a new mascot, the "Mighty Banyans," based on the banyan trees found on campus. It looks like an anthropomorphized banyan tree with a face and muscles for branches. Interim president Richard Corcoran presented the mascot for a vote. Student representative Grace Keenan asked the board to just adopt the banyan for athletics, to allow the student government to vote on the new mascot. "Right now making this decision, while students are away... looks really bad, it harms our relationship with the students... there are a lot of hurt feelings about how this has gone down."

The motion was rejected. One trustee said the language about harm and hurt feelings "is manipulative and should be discounted". He added that the college shouldn't be "catering to the feelings of students... perhaps... we don't know this... who are hurt by the banyan tree mascot."

Board members then voted to adopt the banyan tree.

Corcoran told the board that the addition of team sports and new funding from the Legislature has the college on track to set records for enrollment, following a drop after the initial changes. The balance is almost even male-to-female, as opposed to a previous two-to-one edge for women. Corcoran says that will probably tip toward a 60-40 female ratio as women's sports are added and athletes recruited.

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