Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Opposition overwhelmingly outweighed support in public testimony this week for Senate Bill 1, a public university reform bill backed by the Ohio GOP expected to be voted on by the Senate later this week.
Tuesday’s Senate Higher Education and Workforce Committee was open to proponents, opponents and interested parties alike. More than 800 individuals submitted opposition testimony; four submitted interested party testimony; zero testified in favor of the bill.
S.B. 1 is a sweeping piece of legislation that has broadly been marketed by its sponsors as a way to combat perceived anti-conservative bias against students and faculty in Ohio public universities.
Highlights of the bill — which would not impact private universities — include provisions that would:
- Ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campus and force current DEI initiatives to close;
- 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.
