On March 4, 2025, hundreds of students protested Senate Bill 1 on the Ohio State campus. (Photo by Megan Henry for the Ohio Capital Journal).
More than 700 college students, faculty, and staff testified against a massive Ohio higher education bill that would dramatically alter colleges and universities.
During the Ohio House Higher Education and Workforce Committee’s three-hour meeting on Tuesday morning, fourteen people testified against Ohio Senate Bill 1. At 12:10 p.m., Committee Chair Tom Young, R-Washington Township, issued a hard stop order.
“If you pass this bill, you sow the seeds of a mass exodus of university students, leaving Ohio’s economy, workforce, health, and reputation in worse shape than when you found it,” said Sabrina Estevez, an Ohio State University student.
Senate Bill 1 would outlaw diversity and inclusion efforts, prohibit faculty strikes, establish rules for classroom discussion, create post-tenure reviews, jeopardize diversity scholarships, reduce university board of trustees terms from nine to six years, and require students to take an American history course, among other things.
It would establish guidelines for classroom discussions on “controversial beliefs” such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, and abortion. SB 1 would only affect Ohio’s public universities.
State Senator Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced S.B. 1, which passed the Ohio Senate last month.
Those who testified on Tuesday discussed the bill’s strike ban, tenure review, collective bargaining, classroom discussion regulations, and the diversity and inclusion ban.
“S.B. 1 is a censorship bill,” declared David Jackson, president of Bowling Green State University’s American Association of University Professors chapter. “The bill’s contradictions will leave stakeholders wondering, ‘What can I say?'” “What can’t I say?”
Jackson also discussed how tenure ensures academic freedom.
“Professors with academic freedom are the best thing that students have available to them, because it causes universities and faculty to be innovative in terms of teaching and research,” he told me. “The chilling effect that would be caused … would be bad, not just for the faculty members, but for the students whom we serve.”
State Representative Josh Williams, R-Sylvania, questioned many of those who testified about campus strikes.
“Why do you think that faculty at our at our public universities can threaten to hold back students from graduating or earning their degree simply to have it as a bargaining tool in your negotiations?” Williams inquired.
University faculty strikes are uncommon in Ohio. Workers at Youngstown State University went on strike for a few days in 2020 over pay disputes, while Wright State University faculty went on strike for nearly three weeks in January 2019 over pay and health care issues.
“It is the only power that organized labor has in a bargaining process,” Jackson told reporters. “While strikes are vanishingly rare … the existence of those nuclear weapons, if you will, makes the parties work together and solve the problems that their campuses face, and that’s why strikes rarely happen.”
In Ohio, public employees, including first responders and corrections officers, cannot strike.
“The thing that those professions have in common is public safety,” state Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna, stated while questioning Ohio Education Association Vice President Jeff Wensing.
“I don’t believe that faculty members of higher institutions fall into the category of police and fire and protecting public safety,” Wensing informed the audience.
S.B. 1 is already affecting Ohio’s universities.
“Qualified, talented faculty have decided not to put their name in the hat for a search at some of our institutions because of a fear of what kind of environment they will be coming into,” Jackson told the crowd.
John Plecnik, an associate professor of law at Cleveland State University, believes S.B. 1 was written by a University of Michigan faculty member or administrator.
“There’d be no greater way to damage Ohio State or Ohio’s public universities,” he told reporters.
Madison Wesley, the University of Cincinnati’s Undergraduate Student President, shared testimonies from concerned students.
“One such student, from Appalachia, fears that the ripple effects of this bill could make it harder for students like her to pursue an education,” she told me. “A pre-med student recently expressed fears that the implications of this bill could negatively affect the accreditation of Ohio medical schools and, by extension, their future career.”
Wesley also discussed how the bill threatens Ohio’s higher education.
“This will diminish the value of our degrees and make it harder to attract and retain top talent in our state,” she told the audience.
According to Ohio State Professor Erynn Beaton, S.B. 1 is “pulled from the Florida playbook.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill in 2022 that affects tenured faculty, and another in 2023 that prohibits the state’s public colleges and universities from funding diversity and inclusion programs.
“I personally know several faculty who have left Southern states due to the legislative environment,” Beaton told the audience.
Ashley Hope Pérez, an Ohio State Associate Professor, says she used to look forward to her two sons attending public universities in Ohio, but not anymore.
“S.B. 1 undermines every Ohioan’s right to an effective and complete education,” she told the crowd. “It also endangers students’ competitiveness in a rapidly changing professional landscape.”
S.B. 1 has faced strong opposition since its introduction in January. Last week, hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and alumni demonstrated against the bill at Ohio State University. When the bill was in the Senate committee, over 800 people testified in opposition to it.
During Cirino’s sponsor testimony last week, Ohio House Democrats bombarded him with questions about his bill.
