NC 1998-2003

It was in one of Maria Vesperi’s courses, I’m sure, that I encountered Hunter S. Thompson’s now-aphorism: “When the going gets weird, the weird go pro.” I read this as profoundly hopeful. While Y2K had not produced the promised techno-anarchist doomsday, it at least suggested a handsome market value for “weird” in the new millennium.

After graduating from New College in 2003 with an AOC in anthropology and earning a master’s degree in 2005, I moved to Shanghai to improve my Mandarin. Six months of language study became seven years as an educator and entrepreneur. With three thousand dollars, I co-founded New Horizons Test Preparation. When we sold the company in 2013, it was a cornerstone of international education in Shanghai, with three centers serving hundreds of students in grades 4-12 each year. Along the way, I developed curricula and handled budgeting, staffing, operations, and regulatory compliance: the everyday exigencies of growing a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in a place where rule of law existed only in our AP U.S. History textbooks.

Somewhere between building New Horizons, earning a PhD in City and Regional Planning at Cornell, and drafting an academic monograph during the sleepless years of early parenthood, I realized that I do not, in fact, possess weirdness. Among the world’s truly great weirdos, weirdness is like oxygen in photosynthesis: a by-product of their existence. My own truth is different. I have developed an uncanny ability to dream, strategize, plan, and execute—to function, in other words, as a normal person—at atmospheric pressures of weirdness that would melt the face off an actually-normal person.

For more than fifteen years, my research has examined land politics, dispossession, and diasporic placemaking in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China. That work has taught me that dispossession involves the loss not only of land, autonomous governance, and institutional representation, but also of the power to define a place: to narrate its past, decide who belongs, and foreclose alternative futures. Communities resist by constituting communities rooted in places that transcend their original physical space. They build networks and counterpublics, adapt rituals, and create institutions that exceed captured geography. In short, they refuse negation.

That lesson feels urgently relevant to New College.

I am running for the NCA Board because I believe empowering our community requires both fighting to regain something lost—something stolen, even—and developing durable new ways to support New College students, alumni, and the intellectual community that binds us together. NCA has mobilized alumni and allies to preserve New College’s legacy and provide material support to its traditionally non-traditional student body as it resists erasure. Could that mission expand to include counter-curricular offerings, academic mentorship, and intellectual community for the next generation of weirdos? Could NCA help build new forms of a New College community—rooted in Sarasota but no longer confined to it?

It is an audacious vision requiring bold leadership and egoless, workhorse dedication to mission. As I have demonstrated over eight years on the faculty at Bryn Mawr College, these are not contradictory traits. I have chaired committees and served on the Advisory Council. During the transition from a 3/2 to a 2/2 teaching load, I helped lead curricular redesign and growth planning in an interdisciplinary department whose members held very different priorities. As a founding member of the Data Science steering committee, I helped turn a $5 million spend-down grant in humanistic data science into a program, a minor, and a permanent faculty line. I know how to build consensus, manage resources, execute strategic plans, and make temporary opportunities durable.

Radical education does not wait for invitation. The New College I knew—and the community I hope to help sustain, extend, and reimagine—is inventive. It is counter-programmatic. It is, after all, a revolution.

NC 2019-2023

My name is Madi Markham (she/they), I graduated from New College in 2023 with a concentration in Sociology/Gender Studies, and I’m excited to be running for a position on the Novo Collegian Alliance board. I want to join the Novo Collegian Alliance board because I would love to give back to the New College community and support the continued growth of NCA’s work with alumni.

As a student, I was involved on campus in many ways–ranging from things like hosting a COUP and running the SHARE Room, to serving as an orientation leader and sitting on an LGBTQ-inclusivity committee with the former OOIE. In 2023, I was one of many students organizing against the takeover on campus, which included co-planning the first alternative graduation with my peers and the NCA. Since graduating, I’ve been working in K-12 education advocacy, serving as an organizer and steward with my union, and volunteering with Brooklyn UUs for Justice in the Middle East. If elected to become a board member of the NCA, I would bring the perspective of someone who attended New College post-takeover and would contribute to the range of experience represented on the board.

As a board member, I would work with the rest of the other members of the Novo Collegian Alliance board and the broader New College alumni community to increase engagement with alums across cohort and location, from hosting more events to developing additional ways to reach newer alums. Additionally, I would see if the NCA could develop supplementary formats for current or recent students to connect with alumni–for example, to connect around mentorship or advice for fields or career paths that the current administration is less likely to support. And, as someone who previously helped plan an alt grad in the past, I would love to contribute to the planning of any remaining alt grad ceremonies.

I experienced firsthand the incredible work the NCA does for students when I attended New College, and I understand the importance of a strong alumni community as an alum myself. I'd love to be able to bring my perspective and skillset to contribute to NCA’s work serving New College alumni and the broader New College community. Thank you for your consideration.

NC 1990-1994

Experience in Florida government, that is what I can bring to the position. I have been in Florida local government for close to thirty (30) years both in the public and private sector. I know how to manuever the language of government to provide for successful and zealous advocacy on behalf of our members.  I have been an attorney in the public and private sector since 1997, and have served on the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party now in two counties (Palm Beach and Volusia), so experience and political contacts is what I can bring to the position to continue the fight to restore New Collge.

NC 1973-1980

I’ve been involved with New College for over fifty years. As so many of us know, New College was a transformative place to study, yet it has stood on the brink of crisis for as long as it has been in existence. I bring my decades of experience with the College, along with a strong commitment to its success to my work as current Board President.

New College stands today under siege from forces that would destroy its unique mission and philosophy, that every student is responsible, in the final analysis, for their own education. As this struggle has progressed I’ve focused my board work towards serving our alum community, now over 6000 strong. As a founding member of the NCA Board, as President, I lead the efforts of my amazing colleagues and friends on the NCA Board. Since 2023, when the hostile forces overran our Alma mater, I’ve stood in resolute opposition to those who would see our unique college become another tool of ideologues, crushing academic freedom and expression in the name of culture wars.

I cannot and will not let them succeed. The battle goes on. The knowledge of what New College was always meant to be and my desire to preserve it is what I bring to the table. Thank you.

NC 1967-1970

I attended NC at a rather pivotal moment; served as chair of the Student Executive committee for a year and a half. Knew some of the Great Old Ones pretty well, sometimes in their off-duty capacities. I'm not an NC chauvinist and I don't think we experienced something transcendent and unique, but it was a stroke of luck for me personally to study there (and actually graduate!) and I've never regretted it. I do think it was a pretty interesting milieu historically and deserves to be documented and remembered.