Letter from the Editor: To the staff of The Alligator

DANIEL DASSOW Editor-in-Chief

means student protest at first. As editor of a smaller paper, I have admired your multifaceted, persistent coverage of the backlash against the election of Sen. Ben Sasse to the office of president of the University of Florida.

It’s ancient history by this point, but there was fierce protest of the election of Randy Boyd as interim president by the UT Board of Trustees on Sept. 25, 2018. Students began using the hashtag #RunOutRandy and a student who rushed the podium at the board meeting was removed by cops.

At issue, of course, was Boyd’s campaign for governor, during which he was open about his conservative Christian values, his antiabortion stance and his support for the Second Amendment.

rightfully leads UF students to wonder if he will be an advocate for them.

There is another commonality between our states that makes Boyd and Sasse’s experience as politicians all the more important. Our governors are jockeying for national attention to see who can create the most outrageous headlines (spoiler alert: you’re winning).

As student journalists, we are used to being called biased hacks when we do our job and attend to power differentials that create lesser outcomes for marginalized groups.

But the news is never all bad, and sometimes anger creates real change. I am hopeful that Sasse will find ways to stand up for students.

To The Independent Florida Alligator,

I am writing to you because we now have something in common beyond our status as student papers. Our university presidents are both (ex)-Republican politicians.

Granted, our President Randy Boyd only ran for office, but the Board of Trustees approved him as interim president the month after he lost his primary bid for governor of Tennessee to Bill Lee, who is, by all accounts, his good friend.

What does it mean to have a once-political sloganeer as a college president? Of course, it

But at some point, the protests stop and the president gets to work and then our job as student journalists becomes harder. Anger is easy to cover. I’ve love interviewing protestors because they give such juicy, rage-y quotes. But Sasse’s Republicanism and his status as a politician will now operate in much more subliminal ways which are harder to uncover and decode.

At UT, this has meant enlisting the legislature’s help in creating more workers for Tennessee, a goal of Boyd’s which is admirable but has also led us to experience growth at an unsustainable rate and has alienated some faculty.

I do not know what Sasse’s story will be at UF, but he has a much longer voting record, which

In fall 2021, when President Boyd planned to pay for breakfast for a fundraiser for an ultraconservative state senator who supported a ban on gay marriage and the “Stop the Steal” movement, he quickly backed out of the event and hosted a town hall to hear students’ concerns. I gained a lot of respect for Boyd in that moment, as he publicly apologized and made changes.

Sasse’s tenure is likely to be a mixed bag of missteps, apologies, accomplishments, further alienations and growth. Covering all sides of a public figure is difficult but important work that we have striven to accomplish.

On the other side of all the anger, you all are in a position to create incredible journalism at a pivotal moment for Florida and the university, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.