Ohio college students and faculty grappling with changes on campus from new higher education law
Ohio college students and faculty are feeling the effects of a new, wide-ranging higher education law that bans diversity efforts, prohibits faculty strikes, and regulates classroom discussion.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed Ohio Senate Bill 1 into law on March 28 after it quickly passed the House and Senate earlier this year.
Ohio S.B. 1 went into effect at the end of June, meaning this is the first fall semester under the new law.
The new law creates post-tenure reviews, puts diversity scholarships at risk, sets rules around classroom discussion, and creates a retrenchment provision that blocks unions from negotiating on tenure, among other things. The law affects Ohio’s public universities and community colleges.
“The best way to describe it is everything, quite honestly, just seems a little bit more bleak … just the general repression of speech and student expression, whether it’s inside the classroom, outside of the classroom, on campus and the dorms,” said Sabrina Estevez, an Ohio State University senior.
Ohio State banned chalking on campus over the summer and now all dorm decor in the common areas must be Ohio State-specific.
“Given changes to federal and state policy, the university has been reviewing practices, rules and policies,” Ohio State University spokesperson Ben Johnson said in an email.
“We revised the university signage standards in light of continued complaints regarding chalking on campus and the significant amount of administrative time spent evaluating chalking.”
No other public Ohio university has taken those measures though.
“It feels like the university is over-complying,” said Estevez, who is president of Ohio State’s Ohio Student Association chapter. “It just feels so antithetical to what I believe a learning space should look like.”
Students said the new law is affecting the quality of education they are receiving.
Even though Estevez said she never hears her professors use the words “Senate Bill 1” in the classroom, she said “it still kind of lingers over everybody’s head … we don’t know what we can say to each other.”
“I think you need to be able to express things freely and challenge thought, but there’s just not much of that anymore,” she said.
As a political science major, Miami University sophomore Kali Barcroft said she has noticed her professors change what they are comfortable talking about in the classroom, referring to the controversial issues portion of the new law.
“It just says ‘controversial’ issues and that’s very up in the air for a lot of people as to what that means,” Barcroft said. “And so in my classes, it’s been a very different environment overall.”
For classroom discussion, the law set rules around topics involving “controversial beliefs” such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.
“Not having (those topics) talked about in the classroom is damaging, people aren’t expanding upon what they already know,” Barcroft, who is president of Miami’s Ohio Student Association chapter.
“People aren’t embracing a new perspective from what they’ve already known and grown up with.”
She said she has noticed professors being hesitant to talk about certain topics in the classroom, such as abortion or COVID-19 pandemic policies.
John O’Keefe, an associate history professor at Ohio University’s Chillicothe campus, said there’s a possibility of a chilling effect among faculty because of the new law.
“Our big concerns really are that portions of this bill will affect our ability to teach honestly and effectively in the classroom, and also restrict our competitiveness, so that this will lower the university’s ability to recruit top faculty, both in teaching and in research,” he said.
O’Keefe said some of the provisions have added more work for faculty.
“It means that more time is being taken away from the things we really care about — having really strong discussions in the classroom (and) creating environments where students are comfortable,” he said.
Diversity centers across Ohio’s public universities — including LGBTQ+ centers, women’s centers, and multicultural centers — have closed because of the new higher education law.
“It was genuinely upsetting to arrive on campus that first day and see what they’ve done to the African American Cultural Resource Center,” said Christian Caffey, a University of Cincinnati senior.
“Even though it’s just changing the words on the building … they wiped me off the building.”
The University of Cincinnati’s African American Cultural Resource Center was renamed the Cultural Center as a result of new law.
“I think students are really bearing the brunt of having to replace the community that’s been lost with the loss of those identity centers,” Estevez said.
Barcroft said there’s been efforts to try and replace the sense of community from the diversity centers on campus, but said “it just doesn’t have that same feeling.”
Kent State University and the University of Akron are the latest universities to announce eliminating degree programs.
The University of Toledo announced earlier this year it is suspending nine undergraduate programs and Ohio University is suspending 11 degree programs.
Kent State is eliminating 24 undergraduate degrees including a bachelor of arts in Earth science, a bachelor of arts in physics, a bachelor of arts in Africana Studies, and a bachelor of arts in chemistry, among others.
The University of Akron is getting rid of three programs.
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