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VOLUME 119 - ISSUE 25
MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2025
Not officially associated with the University of Florida
Published by Campus Communications, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida
UF community defends value of women’s studies amid DEI rollbacks ADVOCATES ARGUE THE PROGRAM’S LASTING IMPACT GOES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
By Grace McClung Alligator Staff Writer
Fifty years ago, Irene Thompson stood before a sea of 370 students, preparing to teach UF’s first womenoriented course. She felt overwhelmed. The English department thought she was out of her mind. So did the administration. The course — "Images of Women in Literature from Ovid through Norman Mailer” — met one evening a week and attracted an even split of men and women. According to Thomspon, many of the male students enrolled in the course because their girlfriends were taking it. Other students expected a “rap session,” and some simply wanted to play “devil’s advocate.” By the second week, nearly 300 students dropped the course. But the 72 men and women who stayed helped mark a milestone in Thompson’s quest to establish UF’s women’s studies program, which the university formally authorized in 1977. Now, less than 50 years later, state lawmakers are putting the program’s progress in jeopardy. A ‘breadth of education’
In January, the state university system’s Board of Governors voted to strip women’s studies courses — among hundreds of others — from UF’s general education catalog. The decision stemmed from a 2023 state law directing universities to purge “identity politics” and “unproven, speculative, or exploratory content” from general education offerings. An earlier version of the law banned women’s studies outright, though the measure was dropped from the final bill. Florida is one of a growing number of states where women’s and gender studies have been targeted by Republican lawmakers, who see the programs as illequipped to prepare graduates for the workforce and a waste of taxpayer dollars. “You’re going to have a truck driver pay for someone’s degree in gender studies. No, that doesn’t make sense,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a 2023 rally in Iowa. Most recently, the Board of Governors commissioned a system-wide pilot study to assess the “return on investment” of women’s and gender studies programs, along with four STEM fields — a move some faculty and Democratic lawmakers see as an attempt to devalue the
SEE WOMEN, PAGE 3
SPORTS/SPECIAL/CUTOUT
Staffing issues finish with comma, Story description Gainesville residents reflect on GPD pg# numbers. Read more on pg. 5.
Noah Lantor // Alligator Staff
Florida Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr. (1) passes the ball during a basketball game against UConn in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday, March 23, 2025, in Raleigh, N.C. Read more in Sports on pg. 12.
Detainees allege abuse, isolation at Baker County Detention Center FILED COMPLAINTS SHOW LACK OF MEDICAL CARE, UNSANITARY CONDITIONS By Vera Lucia Pappaterra Alligator Staff Writer
Freezing temperatures, soiled clothing and scarce medical attention are among the daily realities reported by detainees inside the Baker County Detention Center. The U.S. Immigration and Enforcement detention center in Macclenny, about 50 minutes north of Gainesville, is one of four facilities in Florida that houses undocumented immigrants. Yet according to advocates and filed com-
The Avenue: Swamp to stage
plaints, the Baker facility is also the site of abuse and neglect. The Baker facility has received 259 complaints since 2017, comprising over half of the 470 total across the state’s four detention centers. Alice Gridley leads Baker Interfaith Friends, a group that visits the detention center and offers support to the people taken into detention and their families who are left behind. Much of Gridley’s work involves speaking with detainees, offering support and momentary relief from the alleged ongoing abuse at the detention center. She and other volunteers try to bridge the gap for detainees, making phone calls to detainees’ loved ones. Most of the time, all detainees asked for was for
Former UF student makes his way to Broadway, pg. 6
someone to let their family know where and how they were. “The first time I went, I have to admit, I was kind of in shock, because I had no idea what was going on in detention centers,” Gridley said. Still, after six years of volunteering and meeting with detainees at Baker, Gridley said she’s stunned by what she hears and sees. Visitors at the Baker facility are only allowed to speak with detainees through a video monitor at the detention center for 15 minutes at a time. After the COVID-19 pandemic, visits were relegated to at-home virtual meetings through HomeWAV, an inmate communication
SEE ICE, PAGE 4
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Floridians talk education cuts, pg. 5
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