OPINION: Ohio Senate Bill 83 (SB 83) is a Destructive Act

Ayden McDougle is a sophomore political science (pre-law) major and history minor, he is an Opinion Writer and Host/Writer/Producer of Athens Happens for The New Political.

Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.

Earlier last year, on March 14, Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino (R-18) introduced Senate Bill 83 (SB 83) officially titled, The Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act to the Ohio Senate. 

With this extraneous and destructive bill, Senator Cirino claims that this bill will ensure intellectual diversity in the classroom and among the faculty; provide free speech protections for students, faculty, and staff; allow education of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth; eliminate requirements for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) courses or training for students, staff or faculty; require full syllabus transparency; ban political and ideological litmus tests in all hiring, promotion, and admissions decisions; install a number of other worthwhile provisions including the establishment of post-tenure periodic review, and requiring full disclosure of any donations made by any affiliate of the People’s Republic of China. 

The timeline of events for this bill, which is currently in the Ohio House Higher Education Committee, began after Senator Cirino introduced it on March 14, 2023. 

On March 21 SB 83 was referred to the Workforce and Higher Education Committee and the first hearing was held on March 22. 

The second hearing for this bill was on March 29 where The Committee heard from five proponents for SB 83. 

On April 19 The Committee held a third hearing which had submitted testimony from 344 witnesses; 324 of which were opponents, 15 were interested parties, and the remaining five were proponents. 

A fourth hearing was held on May 9 without any submitted testimony. 

The fifth and final hearing over SB 83 within the Ohio Senate Workforce and Higher Education Committee was held on May 17 2023 which had 132 submitted testimonies from the general public and citizens from esteemed organizations such as The Ohio State Bar Association and the Children’s Defense Fund - Ohio. The majority of testimony came from 131 opponents, and the other one being an interested party. Ohio Senate Bill 83 passed the Senate 21-10, essentially along party lines with all seven Democrats joined by three Republicans in voting against the passage of this bill. 

For a bit of review, after hearing 481 testimonies in total across five hearings, 455 were from people against this bill, 10 were from people who support this bill, and the remaining 16 testimonies were from interested parties. Yet, 21 Ohio Senate Republicans decided to pass this bill with minimal revisions to the original bill that was introduced. 

As of January 3, 2024 this bill has been re-referred to the Rules and Reference House Committee. The Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act has not progressed any further as of January 16, 2024. 

Chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, Gary Daniels stated within his testimony that, “Senate Bill 83 has experienced many changes throughout its legislative history. Some of these changes have been positive, but that is admittedly a low bar.” 

He additionally stated that, “Despite these welcome changes, SB 83 remains a confusing, restrictive, counterproductive, and arguably unconstitutional bill. To be clear, the ACLU of Ohio does and always has supported robust free speech, academic freedom, and intellectual diversity protections on Ohio’s college and university campuses. However, we believe SB 83 is contrary, not complimentary, to these goals.” 

Submitted testimony of opponents to this bill do not just come from lobbyists and lawyers, many students submitted testimony, such as Olivia Gallo, an undergraduate Organizational Leadership and Social Justice student from Miami University. 

She wrote, “As a student at Miami University, I have seen the benefit of a liberal education. I have found immense value in learning from the perspectives of others and learning about all the different subjects that Miami has to offer… SB 83 and HB 151 do not promote intellectual freedom, they limit it. They want to put students in classrooms that restrict the ability to hear the perspectives of others, they want to restrict classrooms that discuss the real history and not the whitewashed one that is forced down our throats for years. There is not an ounce of actual freedom represented in this bill.” 

This statement of opposition to this bill is a very similar sentiment for students all across the state of Ohio. 

Another opponent of this bill is Clovis Westlund, an undergraduate student at Ohio State University and an Organizing Fellow with Honesty for Ohio Education. They share their experiences as a queer student in Ohio, through shared experiences by other students and they attest to what they have witnessed throughout their academic journey. 

Westlund states that, “More than anything, identity-affirming public education has saved my life. When I was first moving through the schooling system, I learned to isolate certain aspects of myself to survive and be accepted by those around me. My health and history courses made no mention of LGBTQ+ people, and as I was coming into my queer and non-binary identities, I was left without the language, history, and context to understand myself. I operated in an all-encompassing culture of invisibility.” 

Additionally stating that, “I witness students' doubts about enrolling in their state flagship university over their out-of-state private options. They might have wanted to stay close to home or reinvest in their community, but now they second guess. They see themselves and Ohio higher education on two diverging trajectories, one where Ohio students are centered in their learning and another defined by external forces and political interests.”

It cannot go without mentioning once again that with limited submitted testimony from proponents it would seem to leave the general public of Ohioans wondering as to why the Ohio Senate Republicans even passed this bill beyond the scope of their own personal and political agendas. 

Proponents such as George Dent, a Professor of Law Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Scholars has stated that, “This legislation is badly needed. I see that opponents of the bill are saying that it addresses nonexistent problems – keep moving, there’s nothing to see here. So I want [to] state just a few reasons why this bill most definitely is needed.” 

Following this statement Dent added a bit of personal, yet outdated clarification, such as, “...first I want to give a little background context. By the 1930s it was obvious that Karl Marx’s vision of the violent overthrow of liberal democracies by workers’ revolts was not going to happen. Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci suggested that the left could instead gain power by infiltrating and taking over a nation’s institutions – what came to be called the long march through the institutions.” 

Breaking down the entirety of Professor Dent’s statement for this bill, which can be found here is a very simple task. This argument for the passage of SB 83 fails to mention a multitude of points that are discussed throughout this proposed bill. The largest takeaway is the outdated tactic of introducing “The Red Scare” which was a form of panic due to a rise in leftist ideology and the potential rise of communism after the First and Second World Wars.

Other proponents such as Dr. Hal R. Arkes, who has taught at both Ohio University and Ohio State University from 1972 until 2011 took a less politically incentivized stance. He started by addressing the question of, “What is the problem this bill is trying to solve?” 

For Dr. Arkes that answer is, “There is a two-part answer to this question. The first part is the overwhelming preponderance of liberals versus conservatives among university faculty. In English the liberal to conservative ratio is 88 to 3. In the social sciences it is 75-9. In humanities it is 81 to 9. In political science it is 81-2. These lopsided statistics would be of no concern except that the liberals confess to being discriminatory against conservatives.

On May 1, 2023 the ACLU Campus Action Team of Ohio University began circulating a petition against SB 83. Since then, the petition has received a total of 205 signatures, from students and faculty all condemning the passage of SB 83. The language of the petition reads as follows: 

“A group of students and faculty are forming a coalition to demand Ohio University's administration formally condemn SB 83. Higher education as we know it is on the precipice of destruction in the state of Ohio. The institutions that we invest our time and money into are at risk of being gutted by Ohio lawmakers who want to erase the resources, centers, academic research and programs that serve minority and marginalized groups. We are completely against this bill as students, faculty, and staff of Ohio University. We demand that the administration at this university stand with us in our opposition to SB 83.

We need your help by adding your name and organization to our sign on letter that demands OU administration protect its faculty, staff, and students by formally and publicly condemning SB 83. We need your help in protecting higher education in Ohio and letting our representatives know where Ohio University stands on this racist, anti-LGBT, anti-feminist, and anti-workers rights piece of legislation.”

If passed, and signed into law by Ohio Governor, Mike DeWine (R) it should be noted that in its entirety, SB 83 only goes to threaten Ohio higher education, this bill would alter and decimate DEI initiatives, and policy related to diversity and/or divisive concepts. The most blatant product  of this bill would be to instill more government overreach that will attack our academic freedoms within higher education.