Florida Student Launches LGBTQ+ Newspaper Despite DeSantis Legislation

In early October 2023, Mary Rasura, a senior multimedia journalism major at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), was investigating a story about the closure of the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) center for a local LGBTQ+ publication.

FAU officially shut down the Center for Inclusion, Diversity Education, and Advocacy (IDEAs) following the July 1 enactment of Senate Bill (SB) 266, which banned all state funding of DEI initiatives on Florida college campuses — but did it almost silently, according to Rasura.

It was the perfect topic, as it turned out, for not just a story, but a new publication.

Rasura, along with Jason Parsley, the publisher of OutSFL, the Southeast’s largest LGBTQ+ weekly print news publication, started a new student-run newspaper — meeting in and distributing outside of the former Center for IDEAs.

On Jan. 11, they published the first issue of OutFAU. The tabloid-sized publication seeks to establish itself as a significant voice for LGBTQ+ FAU students despite Florida’s restrictions on DEI initiatives on college campuses throughout the state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis championed SB 266, one of many anti-DEI bills throughout the nation. Numerous LGBTQ+ and DEI centers on Florida’s college campuses have been forced to close as a result, leaving LGBTQ+ students without established safe spaces and critical resources.

Despite this, Rasura wants to show DeSantis that LGBTQ+ students will not be silenced.

The government has tried to stifle expression of the queer community, but we’re still here. We want to express ourselves. That’s the whole point of OutFAU. DeSantis can’t get rid of us, Rasura told BestColleges.

The bill does not stop DEI-related student clubs or organizations from operating independently. OutFAU is one of a growing number of student-led organizations throughout the nation that have continued to offer DEI-related programming without state funding.

OutFAU was made possible via a partnership with Parsley’s publication, OutSFL. The progeny of the decades-old South Florida Gay News, OutSFL, a free weekly publication, distributes throughout South Florida and focuses on news relevant to the LGBTQ+ community.

Parsley said the partnership, which will be funded by advertising revenues, was a natural response to the current hostile climate toward the LGBTQ+ student community, paired with the evolving informational needs of the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.

Most of [OutSFL’s] focus has been on the older communities, Parsley told BestColleges. But because our youth are being targeted, we need to be there more than ever. We need to be on the ground, telling the stories of the LGBTQ+ community in higher education — to bring awareness, to bring life to what’s happening.

OutSFL issues distributed off campus included inserts of the eight-page inaugural OutFAU issue. With permission from the university, Rasura and Parsley installed OutFAU’s first on-campus distribution bin just outside the Center for IDEAs’ former entrance.

Rasura, whose formal title is executive editor, wrote the entire inaugural issue herself, including:

OutFAU is for our community to come together, to recognize and express the vibrant queer community that still exists in Florida even as our government seeks to make us disappear, Rasura wrote in the issue’s editor’s letter.

Rasura is also a staff writer for FAU’s official student newspaper, the University Press (UP). She said that she will continue to write for the UP, even as she attempts to expand OutFAU in the hopes of starting a new [media] outlet for students that she can leave behind once she graduates.

Rasura’s efforts are part of a larger nationwide response by students and LGBTQ+ community members to anti-DEI legislation. In Texas, for example, students at Texas Tech University have continued hosting LGBTQ+ events despite the closure of their LGBTQ+ center and the cessation of all state funding to DEI programming.

Even educators have spoken out against anti-DEI legislation.

Still, the efforts on behalf of state governments to impede or altogether restrict state funding of DEI initiatives in educational settings continue. Florida was among the first states to implement anti-DEI legislation in colleges, with DeSantis leading the charge for such measures.

DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination, DeSantis said in the days leading up to the implementation of SB 266.

Since then, staff members at LGBTQ+ and DEI centers throughout Florida’s colleges and universities have been summarily reassigned to other positions. Many of the centers, including FAU’s Center for IDEAs, saw their doors closed with little warning or explanation from university administrators.

It was really under the radar, Rasura said. We had no warning, and [the closure] wasn’t really publicized. All we know is that it happened over the summer.

Rasura is working to secure more distribution spots across campus so the LGBTQ+ campus community doesn’t go uninformed again.

In the meantime, the next issue of OutFAU is already in the works, as are plans for the publication’s future once Rasura graduates.

I would love to see [OutFAU] grow into something I can leave behind, Rasura said. I want to establish a staff and platform of voices other than my own and mentor students who might be new to student media even after I leave the university.

Parsley will continue to publish OutFAU under the umbrella of OutSFL, and will use what he hopes are rising advertising revenues to offset operational and printing costs.

He hopes to recruit additional writers as well and, if the publication succeeds, expand to other universities in South Florida.