COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio conservatives want "safe spaces" on college campuses, demonstrated by the passing and introduction of controversial legislation meant to overhaul the state's higher education system.
After hours of hearings and hundreds of people giving testimony, Ohio Republican senators passed Senate Bill 83.
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The bill focuses on what GOP calls “free speech,” banning public universities in Ohio from having “bias” in the classroom and limiting what “controversial topics” can and can’t be taught.
Click here to read more details about the bill.
"Free from the pressure to agree with a single ideological perspective, which dominates our campuses today," Bill sponsor Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) said.
Ohio State University professor Dr. Pranav Jani says S.B. 83 is dangerous and insulting.
"We don't simply tell them what to think and then program them," Jani said. "That's not how education works these days."
This bill has everything to do with young people turning away rapidly from the republican party, the professor added.
"[The Republican lawmakers] want conservative and right-wing ideas to be far more prominent in the lives of young people than they are," Jani said.
But State Rep. Josh Williams (R-Oregon) believes conservatives feel discriminated against on campus, citing his own experience in law school at the University of Toledo.
"If you had an opposing view, you would just call that individual a fascist, a Nazi, as a way of quashing their speech and making their comments and their positions irrelevant," Williams told News 5.
This is why he is in support of this bill and S.B. 117, which would create learning centers on OSU and University of Toledo campuses, meant to specifically target “intellectual diversity”
Read more about the centers on News 5 Cleveland's news partner Ohio Capital-Journal.
"This could be seen as a safe space for conservatives?" we asked.
"I believe it will not only be a safe space for conservatives, but a safe space for individuals who see themselves as not conservative or liberal, but on college campuses to learn," he responded.
But some advocates are calling out the irony in S.B. 83 and 117 – limiting free speech for educators if they are seen as too liberal but creating new spaces for conservatives.
Williams disagreed, telling opponents to "read the actual bill."
"No part of the bill says it gives a safe haven to conservatives," he said.
Jani assures the bills are hypocritical.
"It's exactly the kind of top-down, 1984-style Big Brother government that I thought Republicans were opposed to," the professor said.
Education advocates argue that conservatives have historically made fun of liberals for wanting "safe spaces," but they are spending millions of dollars so they can have a place on campus where they aren't ridiculed by the "liberal elite."
The House will hear both bills in the coming weeks.
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