The upheaval over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs continues on college campuses as Ohio lawmakers advance legislation to stop student indoctrination and encourage intellectual diversity at the state’s public colleges and universities.
Ohio Senate Bill 1 targets DEI programs in higher education. According to its sponsors, it targets faculty strikes and influences students while encouraging classroom discourse that promotes curiosity and critical thinking.
The state Senate approved the legislation last month, and, according to key Republican lawmakers, it’s likely to advance in the House without a significant rewrite this session.
The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act aims to guarantee First Amendment rights by ensuring free expression on campus and in the classroom for students and professors.
“My bill will return our public universities and colleges to their rightful mission of education rather than indoctrination,” said bill sponsor Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, in a news release on the legislation. “We also must return to teaching students how to think rather than what to think, and how to listen to opposing views with a respectful but critical ear.”
Ohio students and faculty see it differently, staging protests across the state on Tuesday as part of a statewide day of action against S.B.1, Ohio Capital Journal reports. Ohio State University’s rally drew hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
The hotly debated bill would ban faculty strikes and strip spending on diversity efforts at public colleges and universities. Cirino is not interested in additional revisions to S.B. 1. He testified at the bill’s first hearing in the House Workforce & Higher Education Committee on Tuesday, according to Gongwer Ohio.
Organized by the Ohio Student Association, the Ohio State protest included a dozen speakers who discussed the bill's negative impacts, which they say would dramatically change higher education across the state.
“Students are under attack,” said Brielle Shorter, a junior at Ohio State, at the rally.
In particular, in addition to the ban on DEI efforts, the legislation sets rules around classroom discussion, threatens diversity scholarships, and requires students to take an American civics literacy course, among other things. It also bars faculty from striking and reduces the terms of university board of trustees from nine to six years.
“This bill would change everything about what education is, and it would gut all your professors’ rights to have job security, to have union power, to have bargaining power,” said Rachel Coyle, with Honesty for Ohio Education, at the rally.
S.B. 1, which only applies to public colleges, stipulates classroom discussion allows students to “reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies and shall not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view.”
Topics deemed controversial include climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.
According to the bill's language, "intellectual diversity" means multiple, divergent, and varied perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues, according to WTOL 11 News, which highlights key points of the legislation.
If the Ohio House passes S.B. 1, it will send the bill to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for him to sign it into law. Protestors plan to push for a veto.
Joel Wainwright, a professor in Ohio State’s geography department, said many of Ohio State’s best faculty would leave for the private sector, private universities “or the country of Canada.”
“What we are playing for, strategically speaking, right now is a veto from Gov. DeWine,” Wainwright said. “If you want to convince Republicans to veto this bill, you have got to get really good at talking about the negative economic consequences.”
During the rally, chants of “Shame on you, OSU” and “S.B. 1 is a war on people. Censorship should be illegal” regularly broke out during the rally and rang across the Oval on Ohio State’s campus.
Lawmakers don’t seem to care what students and constituents think, fueled in part by the federal government’s push to end Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs and hiring practices.
More than 800 people submitted opponent testimony against the bill — significantly outweighing the amount of supporter testimony the bill has received. Several students have said they would leave Ohio if this bill passed, according to an earlier Ohio Capital Journal article.
The protest also follows Ohio State's decision to close its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change.
Last week was the deadline for schools to comply with the U.S. Department of Education’s Dear Colleague letter that threatened to rescind federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices in admissions, programming, training, hiring, scholarships, and other aspects of student life.
