Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Amid a legislative flurry before the Ohio General Assembly went on summer break, the state’s top college campus reform advocate told Statehouse reporters that he put his No. 1 priority on pause due to a lack of cooperation from Ohio House leadership.
Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, told reporters he was frustrated with Republican House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, for not giving his sweeping campus reform proposal Senate Bill 83 a vote on the House floor before the legislature went on a months long hiatus.
The bill, which has been a priority for the Senate, has been in the House since May 2023. Its time in the House has been marked by apprehension from Stephens, who has repeatedly not given the bill a vote due to his belief that it didn’t have the votes.
“Ohio needs higher education reform and the time to display leadership in the House on this bill has come and gone,” Cirino told reporters. “That’s why I’m not interested and will not participate in discussions, respectfully, in the summer.”
Among the many changes S.B. 83 would have brought, Ohio’s public universities would be barred from requiring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training; each would be required to swear off endorsing or opposing most “controversial” beliefs or opinions and affirm that they will not try to alter students’ political beliefs; and it would block university faculty from collectively bargaining on certain matters.
The bill has faced ardent opposition from the left, as well as from universities and faculty groups. Cirino himself noted that one of the bill’s opposition hearings was one of the the longest committee hearings on record at seven-and-a-half hours.
