Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
The Ohio Senate put finishing touches on a controversial campus reform bill Wednesday that would ban diversity, equity or inclusion initiatives and faculty strikes on public college campuses.
The 20-to-11 vote, marked by strong Republican support and unanimous Democratic dissent, sends Senate Bill 1 to the desk of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a conservative who has indicated to reporters that he’ll likely sign the bill into law, though he wants to review it first.
DeWine has 10 business days to make his decision.
If enacted, S.B. 1 would:
- Ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on public college and university campuses and force current DEI initiatives to close, despite offering no definition of what actually constitutes a “DEI” initiative;
- 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 post-graduate degree”;
- 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 state training for university trustees and reduce trustee terms from nine years to six.
