Letter to the President and Board of Regents of the University of California
Letter to the Chancellor and Board of Trustees of California State University
Letter to the Chancellor and Board of Trustees of the State University of New York
Letter to the Maryland Higher Education Commission
Letter and Public Comment to CUNY Board of Trustees
See the Public Comment to the CUNY Board of Trustees as a post.
See also Letter to CUNY Deans 10-25-25
Read: Letter to CUNY Board of Trustees (referenced in public comment 10/21/25). As delivered:
My name is Mike Sanderson. Mr. Chair, my comment with citations has been submitted in writing, and is posted to my website mikesand.com.
I am speaking to unexpectedly urgent agenda items, specially, the appointments of Dr. Kevin Martin and Dr. George White at Laguardia Community College and York College, respectively.
This concerns the urgent matter of Higher Education Accreditation. Their resolutions both highlight in the first paragraph their roles handling accreditor. Higher education is under attack as part of Project 2025, and higher education accreditation has become the battleground. In 2023 Trump called accreditation my “secret weapon.”
I went to New College of Florida in Florida, I have lived in New York City since 2012 and my been upstate in Nyskyuna since the 19th century. Regarding Florida, you hopefully you aware of what has been happening in higher education in Florida from Florida’s reprehensible governor, Ron DeSantis.
You may have heard Ron DeSantis is now trying to replace higher education accreditation with a state-controlled accreditor. It will be staffed by DeSantis to continue their culture war. I’m calling it the Alligator Accreditor.
This ties directly to CUNY, because of a national organization called the Council for Higher Education Accredition, known as CHEA, that lists 5 CUNY colleges as institutional members. This organization’s mission is to defend independent higher education. However, I have evidence from a public records request in Florida that CHEA organization is secretly supporting and encoring Ron DeSantis’s state-controlled accreditator.
My question is, is CUNY funding a secret effort to destroy higher education?
To tie back to Dr. Martin and Dr. White, those institutions include LaGuardia Community College and York College, and Hostos Community College. I’m asking, are the tuition dollars of those students out on the green going to pay the salary of someone supporting and encoring project 2025?
I will add, it’s not just supporting and encouraging. A board member of CHEA has the same role in Florida, and apparently received participation for his willingness to sever on the commission.
I have the email where the president wrote this person, directly, “no good deed goes unpunished.” The punishment the president referred to was objecting to helping Ron DeSantis seize control of higher education.
The others institutions, by the way, are Baruch College and The Graduate Center. I’m not accusing anyone at CUNY of wrongdoing. This effort was secrete. But I am asking for a public, investigation of CUNY’s ties, CUNY’s funding, and to demand that CHEA provide an independent investigation.
I will add, it’s not just institutional. A CHEA board member in Florida apparently received negative feedback, and I have the email where the president said, directly, “no good deed goes unpunished.” The punishment the president referred to was objecting to helping Ron DeSantis seize control of higher education.
Adding, there is nothing to stop the Trump administration from demanding at some point that public university’s in New York submit to the Alligator Accreditor.
My comment with citations has been submitted in writing, and is posted to my website mikesand.com. Thank you .
I’m Mike Sanderson. I last spoke at the foundation meeting on July 11 on this Alligator Accreditor, and I'd like to pick up right where I left off on this, the mystery of the $4 million dollars.
Since then, investigative journalist Jason Garcia has confirmed the $4 million was not listed in the 500-plus-page budget, and that “It only briefly surfaced in a few obscure appropriations records, under a line item that was so vague — “implementation expense” — it was meaningless.”
Jason knows Tallahassee better than I do, but I did check with legislative staff, and the legislature can make allocations so vague they are essentially discretionary.
I want to ask if it’s really possible this $4 million was always intended to create a new accreditor, though I think the intent is a red herring. You have a serious problem with this $4 million regardless ` the intent, and I have a distinct legal issue if I have time.
First, is a new accreditor actually implementing existing legislation? Because the law requires Florida universities to change accreditors repeatedly. So we’re creating a new accreditor that universities will be required to change away from? Your deliverables opening by claiming the legislature allocated $4 million to create this absurd situation.
Second, there’s no evidence. The chancellor spoke to Garcia, "Rodrigues said Renner agreed to give $4 million to the Board of Governors that the agency could quickly tap into if a Republican were to win the 2024 presidential election.” I don’t think that’s true, because you did not act quickly. You met in Jacksonville on January 30, and no one mentioned it. We heard nothing until just after the end of the fiscal year.
I don’t think this secret plan existed because I don’t think it matters if this secret plan existed. The $4 million was real.
The first reason it doesn’t matter is that the Chancellor didn’t tell you about it. Either you had $4 million to create a new accreditor that the chancellor didn't tell you for about 16 months, or you had $4 million in discretionary funds the chancellor didn't tell you about for 16 months.
This isn’t on Renner, who I assume would expect the Board’s liaison to the legislature to keep the Board informed of $4 million.
Second reason, the money was allocated to the Board.
Realistically the Board can honor a private arrangement between the Speaker of the House and the Board’s liaison. But the money was allocated to the Board, so you have to do that. The money was really discretionary, and if there wasn’t actually firm intent and the Board had $4 million in discretionary funds the Chancellor didn’t tell you about until after he decided how to spend them.
Finally, I made a records request for communications regarding this, and I received 17 individuals emails, one for each board member, asking to have a 1-1 conversation with the Chancellor.
To quote from the Sunshine Law Manual, Page 10:
While normally meetings between the school superintendent and an individual school board member would not be subject to s. 286.011, F.S., these meetings were held in “rapid--fire succession” in order to avoid a public airing of a controversial redistricting problem. Thus, even though the superintendent was “adamant that he did not act as a go-between during these discussions and [denied] that he told any one board member the opinions of the others,” the one- to-one meetings amounted to a de facto meeting of the school board in violation of s. 286.011, F.S.
See also Transparency for Florida, Inc. v. City of Port St. Lucie, 240 So. 3d 780 (4th DCA 2018) (evidence did not “conclusively refute” allegations that a series of telephone calls between the city attorney and individual city councilmembers to discuss termination of and severance pay to, the city manager constituted a Sunshine Law violation; accordingly, trial court should not have entered summary judgment in favor of the city).
Im not going to be the plaintiff on this. It’s possible no one actually will step forward, which would be incredible considering the amount of support.
In the end, you're asking other states to sign on to this Alligator Accreditor, and this is how you're going about it. If it turns into a fiasco, the Chairs of the committees won’t be able to say they weren’t involved in the decision. Because doing nothing is being involved.
Get your Alligator Accreditor merch at mikesand.printify.me!
The fox is accrediting the hen house now. The packet says Chicken-Protection accreditor will quote “laser-focus on student outcomes”. Let’s laser focus on the data.
There are 2 overwhelming problems with these scores:
First, the data is stale. These stats are 10 to 14 months old. That’s just the data reporting, the leadership actions these stats measure have by now happened years ago.
Second, the value placed on 1-year improvement. Look at Statistic 5, retention. At New College, Corcoran drove it to deep historic lows in fall 2024. It wasn’t great before, because in one year it’s back to tied with the previous all-time low, Corcoran gets 10 points. This makes no sense.
Remember he was giving students free computers? Did that work? Are you really going to New College in September for a dog-and-pony show?
I’m going to say more in my comment at the Foundation after the main meeting. Thank you.
The last-minute switcheroo only swapped out the Budget and Finance Committee agenda item, not the “Full Board” agenda item. The committee agenda item is only a recommendation; the full board agenda item is the binding action of the Board of Trustees. Regardless of the timing or the motive for the last-minute FAU switcheroo.
This alone almost certainly invalidates the Board’s action. Which version did the Trustees vote for, or which did they think they were voting for?
Direct links below, but in one image:
Current Master Agenda (Last modified by Andrew LaPlant, Director, Board of Trustees & Board Liaison, 6/27/2025 9:52 AM)
Current Budget and Finance Committee Agenda Item (Last modified by Andrew LaPlant 6/27/2025 9:27 AM)
Current Full Board Agenda Item (Last modified by Andrew LaPlant 6/19/2025 9:04 PM)
No-longer-available Budget and Finance Committee Agenda Item (Last modified by Jayson Iroff, Vice President for Financial Affairs and CFO, 6/20/2025 5:16 PM)
UPDATE: Operating Budget modified at 9:27 AM before 10:00 AM meeting start time.
Above: Showing the two versions of the Operating Budget (Page 12) and the PDF Metadata showing modification at 9:27 AM., June 27
Left: Public notice of the meeting at 10 AM, June 27.
During the FAU Board of Trustees meeting, I noticed that the budget on the website was different from the budget I had downloaded a few days earlier. This was not mentioned during the meeting.
This is a $5 million discrepancy.
Modified June 20, 2025, 5:16 PM (original document).
Modified June 27, 2025, 9:27 AM (new document).
My name is Mike Sanderson, some of you may know me from my comments to the Board of Governors. I thank the members of board for taking time from your day to exercise oversight on behalf of the state and people of Florida. My comment concerns the FAU operating budget document, one of your key responsibilities to the state and people of Florida for oversight.
I want to focus on the most extraordinary issue, truly unprecedented, which is the retroactive changes to the athletics budget, made possible by the emergency rule change by the Board of Governors last week.
I want to comment on what this retroactive budget change to athletics actually is, and. I also have some questions about this, including a counterfactual because I don’t know which is true. Finally if I have time I’ll touch on a few general issues.
The retroactive Athletics budget changes are mostly shown by asterisks throughout.
So I pulled last year’s budget slides. At this meeting a year ago, you increased the Athletics budget from about $32 million to $35 million in this ending fiscal year ending now. less than 3 million difference and less than 10% increase.
Now you’re going to retroactively change the athletics budget for this past year to $40 million.
That means in 1 year you will have increased the athletics budget by $8 million or 25% increase to athletics, in one year. Nowhere are you seeing the numbers for the current fiscal year or the year before that. On Page 12, the main document, it actually says you’re decreasing your athletics spending. I don’t think this is an oversight, no pun intended.
This is an extremely misleading way to present this unprecedented change. I don’t know if Board members are also being misled, in which case you should be angry, or if this is just to mislead the public about what you are voting for.
I will note, the House settlement involves Back Pay, but for 10 years with a complex system. If FAU needs to commit funds for back pay, you should be seeing that laid out, you hear the word “Back Pay” that’s not telling you you need to pump $5 million in a rush.
Here's the first counter counterfactual question, because the fiscal year is over, and what I don’t know is, has that $5 million already been spent? or committed? Because if that money has already been spent or committed, and there’s a $5 million deficit, that’s extremely concerning and you should be told that. But that $5 million wasn’t already spent, why are you doing this?
And what was that $5 million in Clear wire money being spent on already? Money is fungible, and if it was paying for things that will now be picked up by taxpayers or other donors, it’s just a shell game. If the university has a $5 million revenue stream that’ s flexible about how you can spend it, maybe you should be making that decision deliberately.
Generally, this entire document is not a budget, it’s a brochure. IT’s a powerpoint pitch deck.
I don’t have time to discuss the financial aid budget, but look at the definition of Financial Aid on Page 62, and then on page 31 and 32. “The ending fund balance represents a timing difference between the receipt of the funds and disbursement to students.”
The choices made in this document won’t make the board or the public informed about how the money is actually being spent. I looked at your athletics department financial audit you saw at your last meeting, I ask at the least, that you reject the retroactive injection of money until the administration presents clearly athletic budgets at that level of detail for this past year and the coming year, and how the money is being spent. Thank you.
The American Revolution’s best-known hero has always been George Washington, future president, but one of the Revolution’s most significant commanders has become less known over time: Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox.”
Following the wild success of the Disney TV series “Davy Crockett,” Francis Marion’s story was later adapted by Disney into an inspirational story of America:
As I will discuss another time, my great-great-grandparents were some of the earliest settlers of Florida, coming from coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and my great-great-grandparents were married in Orange County, Florida in 1972. Through this great-great-grandmother, I know my forbearers supplied the army of Francis Marion — and how I know that is significant.
But first, who was Francis Marion? The memes are not excellent but they exist:
The historical-sign version, however, is excellent:
Brigadier General of S.C. Militia during the American Revolution, Francis Marion, was one of the partisan leaders who kept the war alive during the British occupation of the state. His elusive disappearances after surprise attacks against superior forces harassed and demoralized the enemy, earning for him the name, "Swamp Fox."
Marion never commanded an army or fought in a major engagement, but his tactics were classic guerrilla warfare. The term “guerrilla warfare” wouldn’t be invented until the Napoleonic occupation of Spain in the early 1800s — the “little war.”
To say that Marion was the father of guerrilla warfare goes too far, though he was a master of it. The tactics of avoiding pitched battles and instead wearing out the enemy goes back to the Second Punic War in the 200s B.C. — after Roman defeats by Hannibal at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, the Romans adopted the strategy proposed by Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, ”the Cunctator,” which translates as “the Delayer.”
The term to this day is “Fabian tactics.” Modern history is full of successful applications of Fabian tactics: Napoleon was defeated in Spain, and most famously, Russia. Since I lean into the “New College Snowflakes” branding, it’s worth noting: Snowflakes did not defeat Napoleon. Napoleon was defeated in Russia because he underestimated the will of the Russian people to resist.
Fighting the Meme War
See this past history of Napoleon-Corcoran-NCF dank memes at instagram.com/ncfsnowflakes
The American Revolution is one of the best applications of Fabian tactics in history, and it’s most perfectly encapsulated in the reputation of Francis Marion — but also practiced by the regular Continental Army lead by George Washington.
Washington of course was a student of the classics. Washington knew the tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus by name.
How do I know a distant forbearer supplied the militia of Francis Marion? Because of the long paper trail trying to get reimbursed for it. The South Carolina state archives has digitized the records: Julius Driggers “swore that he delivered to a party of Gen. Marion’s Brigade a Heifer of two years old adjudged to weight two hundred pounds that he did actually serve thirty eight days in the said Brigade as a private…. Sworn before me 1 Jan 1784.”
The document reads, starting at the first indented line “sworn [under oath?] that he delivered to a party of Gen. Marion’s Brigade a Heifer of two years old adjudged to weight two hundred pounds that he did actually serve thirty eight days in the said Brigade as a private…. Sworn before me 1 Jan 1784.”
Later formalized in a certificate IOU:
American liberty and independence was secured by the willingness of patriots to serve for love of country. But an army marches on its stomach. The willingness of the post=Revolutionary governments to honor its promises played a key role in solidifying our system of government.
BOARD_OF_GOVERNORS_QUESTIONS_AND_EVIDENCE.PDF
SEE THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS PALM BEACH QUESTIONS AS A SLIDESHOW
Bonus: Letter to Budget Committee Chair Levine Re: Emergency
Bonus: Public Comment to Florida Poly Re: Accountability plan.
Two weeks ago I asked for scrutiny and you delivered. The question is why you don’t give scrutiny to other presidential selections?
I have submitted evidence and questions about the role of a group called the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. Also on Mike Sand dot com.
In demanding Ono be rejected, the 'Palm Beach Freedom Institute' X account invoking the "Palm Beach Donor Class." and spewed personal insults, rage, and threats, including directed by name at Vice C1hair Levine, The group then claimed credit with mocking cruelty.
The account didn't deny being run by its chairman, Bob Allen, the Palm Beach-based yacht lawyer and New College alum from the 1970s behind the takeover.
Look what was said by Bob Allen under his own name,, regarding Governor DeSantis about being UF president, and by the Freedom Institute said about DeSantis, including regarding the Mayor of Jacksonville.
Bob Allen sold a false narrative about New College, and UF brings into focus how he sold it. And why.
My name is Mike Sanderson. Thank you for taking time out of your day for the BOG and to listen my comment.
Accounting for funds is among the most fundamental responsibilities of the Board of Governors — under the 2010 governance agreement, under the Florida constitution, under statue. The BOG Inspector General has oversight of the entire State University System. The idea in this Work Plan that the 3 highest priorities are all within the BOG office is totally inconsistent with fulfilling the constitutional responsibilities of oversight.
Among the roles is overseeing the system of Audit and Compliance Executives. By special exception, two Universities can have one person fulfill both the roles Chief Audit Executives and Chief Compliance Officers: New College and Florida Poly. It is, in engineering terms, a Single point of Failure.
I remind you again, the new College single point of failure had a “work plan” that had 200 hours auditing Athletic Scholarships for Title 9 compliance, even though Corcoran indignantly denied to this board he has athletic scholarships, and on paper it doesn’t.
I want to stress I’m not against Athletics, Congratulations to UF on again being national champions in men’s basketball; everyone at New College is proud of Olympic Sailing team USA Sarah Newberry Moore; the student center at New College has a case of intramural trophies.
However, After 2 months I got my PRR for the NCF Operating Budget Data in April. I have posted the original document and the decoded doc with the post of this comment on Mike Sand and the analysis visualization on tableau. There’s millions of dollars that doesn’t show up as intercollegiate athletics in reports.
And while Universities can send E&G funds on Women’s Sports for title IX, there’s a code for that and it shows up in the budget summery. Corcoran isn’t using it. He’s coded it as Student Service Administration and General Administration.
Estimated Revenue and Receipts is even more interesting. New College has its own Revenue Type, presumably for historical reasons. How can revenue type be both trust funds and local funds? Regardless, all revenue is clearly accounted for except the New College Local Funds.
By the way, the operating budget summary shows the three years before 2023 New College spent 9 million on “General Administration”. In Corcoran’s first year it went to $27 million on General Administration.
Falsification of documents by a public service is criminal. Doing so for personal gain is a felony. Corcoran is the former Speaker of the House. He knows what he’s doing.
On top of basic budget requirements, the budget proviso called for accounting for the funds spent on New College, and those numbers are completely different. The legislature passed gave that proviso requirement to the BOG and you delegated it to the Chancellor, Chancellor, I am not accusing you of intentional wrongdoing but there’s the appearance you might punish Corcoran more harshly because you’re embarrassed you believed him and had your staff pass his false numbers through to the Legislature. That complaint is at the BOG General OFfice Level.
It now goes for the BOG Chair to consult with the Board of Trustees Chair. Chair Jenks is a securities lawyer, if you want to sue someone for not fulfilling their fiduciary duty you can hire her.
Please reminder her she’s not the College’s defense counsel, and Chair Lamb, regardless of the phrasing, you have the constitutional fiduciary responsibility to account for spending and while you have to consult with Chair Jenks on her decision, you or member of the BOG can by your role, ask for at least a preliminary investigations, especially if experienced with budget and finance.
I know this is not welcome, but if you don’t take action on brazen accounting falsification, the chaos and rot will spread to other institutions,, in ways that are predictable and unexpected.
I guarantee it.