CINCINNATI — The Ohio Senate on Wednesday passed the highly controversial Senate Bill 1. The bill would impact several things across the State of Ohio’s higher education institutions, including banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and initiatives.
“Ohio Senate Bill 1 is literally 75 pages of changes to the way Ohio does higher education,” said University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven, who was also one of the hundreds of people who testified against the bill in front of the Senate.
Niven said he believes the legislators who voted for the bill "seem to think that any account of race or any of identity is meant to exclude when it's the exact opposite — it's meant to include." But proponents of the bill disagree.
“DEI enforces racial divisions, prioritizes group identity over personal merit and creates the very discrimination it claims to be fighting,” said state Sen Andrew Brenner, (R-District 19).
But the bill doesn’t only change DEI policies.
To learn how Senate Bill 1 will impact Ohio campuses, watch our full video below:
Another section of the bill would require all Ohio colleges and universities to teach an American civics literacy course and require all students to take the class to receive their bachelor's degree.
The class would be designed by the state, rather than the professor or university. Niven currently teaches an American civics course at UC, and said the state’s course is outside of the norm.
“It has a required reading list, but not one that a person trying to achieve this objective would choose. And it has some odd, you know, quirky requirements like the instructor would ask the department chair which Federalist Papers to assign, that just no one would come up with if they were trying to come up with the best class possible.”
The bill would also, among other things:
- Allow the state to withhold funds for non-compliance with the bill;
- 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 postgraduate 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 and;
- Require state training for university trustees and reduce trustee terms from nine years to six.
State Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-District 18), the main sponsor of the bill, said the reason why faculty members don’t like the bill is because it challenges them.
“Of course, the faculty don't like what we're doing, many of them,” Cirino said. “They don't like it because it's challenging how they've been working in the past."
We asked Professor Niven how students on campus feel about this bill. WCPO previously spoke with some students who said they feared they wouldn't be able to finish schooling if certain funding was banned.
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“Most students are reacting very skeptically,” said Niven. “They think this is the university being subject to kinda the whims of state legislators who just want their agenda pushed forward.”
Cirino says the Inter-University Council of Ohio (IUC) is neutral on the bill, stating that if it were so terrible then they would oppose it.
The bill now moves to the Ohio House for a vote.
