While the new legislation is largely a rehashing of the much-discussed Senate Bill 83, which failed last year, the new all-out ban on DEI added rancor to an already contentious proposal.
“We are banning DEI entirely in our institutions of higher learning,” Senate Bill 1 sponsor Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, told reporters at a press conference. “It has become institutionalized discrimination paid for by the taxpayers.”
Under S.B. 1′s framework, public universities would be barred from any mandatory training or orientation involving DEI; blocked from opening new DEI departments and required to dissolve current DEI offices; and prohibited from offering “advantages (or disadvantages) to faculty, staff or students regarding admissions, promotions, tenure or working conditions based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression,” among other things.
S.B. 1 also gives the state the ability to withhold certain funds from any university unwilling to comply with S.B. 1′s DEI prohibitions, Cirino said.
For student protestors, S.B. 1′s stance on DEI was a major concern.
“I feel like eliminating DEI removes safe spaces from students on campus,” Ohio State University neuroscience student Eloni McClain told this outlet Wednesday. She said eliminating DEI focus on campus will harm minority students’ sense of belonging.
“I think there are a lot of students on campus who have been attacked,” McClain said. “Myself, last semester, I was called a (racist slur) by a white student, and that shows me that I don’t fit the mold that I think they’re looking for.”
Credit: Avery Kreemer
Credit: Avery Kreemer
Others, including Cirino and new Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, are cynical about DEI’s benefits.
“I think there have been real problems. It’s caused a lack of diversity, certainly a lack of diversity in thought, and has actually caused, in my mind, a lot of racial and religious and ethnic disharmony,” Huffman told reporters Wednesday. “So, I think it’s an important part of the bill and I support keeping it in the bill.”
Cirino expects S.B. 1 to be “on the fast track, for sure” in the Senate, given the overwhelming support S.B. 83 received from its Republican supermajority last general assembly. Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee, told reporters she intends to begin hearings on the bill next week.
In the House, Montgomery County Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., introduced an identical companion bill that has not yet been given a number. He expects the House Workforce and Higher Education committee, which he controls, to begin hearings in two weeks, he told this outlet.
Along with its prohibition on DEI, S.B. 1, would:
- Require students to take a state-designed American civics or history class before being awarded a bachelor’s degree;
- Automatically eliminate any university degree program that awards fewer than five degrees per year on a three-year rolling average;
- Prohibit full-time university faculty from striking;
- Require universities to “Affirm and declare that the state institution will not encourage, discourage, require or forbid students, faculty, or administrators to endorse, assent to, or publicly express a given ideology, political stance, or view of a social policy, nor will the institution require students to do any of those things to obtain an undergraduate or post-graduate degree;”
- Require state training for university trustees and reduce trustee terms from nine years to six.
S.B. 1 would also create a state standard for faculty assessment, including a standardized student assessment of their professors “with a focus on teaching effectiveness and student learning.”
The only question S.B. 1 asserts must be on that assessment is as follows: “Does the faculty member create a classroom atmosphere free of political, racial, gender and religious bias?”
Cirino views the package in sum as a way to help universities reverse a receding tide of enrollment, an existential threat that he attributes to “massively disruptive” cultural changes and demographic realities.
“We have far fewer high school graduates, period,” Cirino said, “And then, on top of that, we have a situation where other post-secondary options are being taken, somewhat driven by workforce demands, that are driving students away from four-year universities.”
For others, the reform effort is seen as little more than an attack on post-secondary education in Ohio.
“A professor should be able to teach, research and write according to their area of expertise,” said Sarah Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio conference of the American Association of University Professors. “What we see S.B. 1 doing is impinging upon that academic freedom because it’s political interference. It’s trying to dictate how faculty can teach their courses.”
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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