The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Where 16-year-old Michelle Huang goes to college hinges largely on what happens with a massive, controversial higher education bill that the Ohio Senate recently passed.
Huang, a junior at Olentangy Liberty High School in Delaware County, said she always imagined herself going to Ohio State University to study political science, but is not so sure anymore because of Ohio Senate Bill 1.
She wants to receive Ohio State’s Morrill Scholarship, a merit scholarship program where one of the requirements is to “contribute to campus diversity.” But S.B. 1 would, among other things, ban diversity and inclusion efforts and jeopardize diversity scholarships.
“The fact that S.B. 1 puts (diversity) scholarships in jeopardy is a big deterrent for me applying to Ohio State and other Ohio schools who offer similar scholarships,” Huang said.
Ohio State University Spokesman Ben Johnson said the Morrill Scholarship Program “is open to students of any background and would continue,” he said in an email.
“We will continue to work with elected officials on both sides of the aisle to advance Ohio State and ensure our students, faculty and staff have the resources and support needed to succeed,” Johnson said in an email. “It’s too early to comment further at this time.”
S.B. 1 would ban diversity and inclusion efforts, prevent faculty from striking, set rules around classroom discussion, put diversity scholarships at risk, shorten university board of trustees terms from nine years down to six years, and require students take an American history course, among other things.
Regarding classroom discussion, it would set rules around topics involving “controversial beliefs” such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.
On Feb. 12, students erupted into protest, chanting "Higher Ed is dead" after Ohio Republican senators passed a controversial bill that would ban diversity initiatives, curb union rights and police how "controversial topics" are taught on college campuses:
State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced S.B. 1 less than a month ago and the Ohio Senate passed S.B.1 last week, so the bill now heads to the Ohio House for consideration. S.B. 1 only applies to Ohio’s public universities and community colleges.
It will need to pass the Ohio House and receive the governor’s signature to become law. If it were to be vetoed by Gov. Mike DeWine, lawmakers would need a 3/5 vote from each chamber to override it.
“I’ve always been really close to Ohio State and having one of the primary incentives to go there just to be taken away is honestly just so saddening to me,” Huang said.
Huang said she still plans on applying to Ohio State in addition to other colleges such as Ohio Wesleyan University, a private school, and Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
“I just have this impending feeling of not knowing,” Huang said. “I really hope that this bill doesn’t progress much further.”
Huang was among the 837 people who submitted opponent testimony and testified in-person during last week’s marathon eight hour Ohio Senate Higher Education Committee meeting.
In testimony, a variety of other students said they would leave the state if the overhaul becomes law in Ohio.
She is also concerned about the potential implications the bill would have on classroom discussions, especially in history and government classes.
“I feel like if the bill is signed into law, it will just be a lot harder for students to learn about our history from a nuanced perspective and also have these important conversations that are pretty essential to our understanding of society and our government,” Huang said.
Eliminating undergraduate degree programs
Among the many provisions in S.B. 1, one would eliminate undergraduate degree programs “if the institution confers an average of fewer than five degrees in that program annually over any three-year period,” according to the bill’s language.
“It’s an arbitrary number that implies things are not functioning the way they should, but it’s actually not necessarily a clear view of what’s going on in the program,” said Gretchen McNamara, a senior lecturer of music at Wright State University. “When you just look at things from a data standpoint, it doesn’t tell the whole story.”
She is also concerned tenured faculty would lose their jobs if a university program is cut.
“It’s just very detrimental to the profession, and there’s no point in tenure if it can so easily be dismissed without a clear metric and understanding of that specific number that they’ve selected,” said McNamara, who is also the president of the Ohio conference of American Association of University Professors.
There are many reasons why a program might be small, said John Huss, the chair of the University of Akron’s philosophy department.
“It could be difficult, so students don’t want to major in it, or they flunk out of it because it’s just hard,” he said. “It may be that it’s a niche program that’s very important, but it’s never going to be numerically large. I think of, for example, strategic languages.”
This provision would hurt the competitiveness of Ohio’s public universities, Huss said.
“We’re having less flexibility for students at public universities than exists for students at state schools in other states or private schools in our own state,” he said.
