Undergraduate Student Government and members of the Ohio State community discussed the Ohio Higher Education Advancement Act at a third hearing Wednesday. Credit: Joe Carpenter | Lantern Reporter
The Undergraduate Student Government often challenges Ohio State, but in Wednesday’s hearing over the “Ohio Education Advancement Act,” it challenged the state government instead.
In its third hearing, opponents, proponents and interested parties from across the state of Ohio provided oral statements and answered questions from the Ohio Senate Workforce and Higher Education Committee. The bill has drawn scrutiny because it outlaws mandatory diversity training, disallows employees in higher education to strike and prohibits the university and its employees from taking public positions on “controversial beliefs or policy.”
Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, the primary sponsor of the bill, said during the committee hearing over nine pages of names of individuals sought to give their thoughts on the bill. Most of the speakers were in opposition. Five people spoke in favor of the bill, according to the Workforce and Higher Education Committee website.
The committee took on some of the biggest issues regarding the bill and its potential effects.
USG President Bobby McAlpine and Vice President Madison Mason represented the student body’s opinion after conducting a survey to gather “student opinion on subjects which can directly impact them, and provide a space for students to express their stance on such topics through meaningful channels, such as testifying at the Ohio Statehouse,” USG stated in an email to students. Survey responses were accepted until Wednesday.
McAlpine, a third-year in electrical engineering and political science, said the survey reached over 1,600 students and wanted to see if students in higher education felt they were being indoctrinated with “liberal beliefs,” which the bill claims Ohio public institutions practice now.
“The numbers are clear: 82 percent of students that answered this survey do not believe that Ohio State faculty, staff or administration seek to impose certain political beliefs on them,” McAlpine said.
Mason, a third-year in political science, read a letter of opposition, not only endorsed and signed by herself and McAlpine, but also by 16 other student body leaders from schools across Ohio — such as Bowling Green State University, Cleveland State University and Miami University.
Earlier today, Honesty for Ohio Education — an organization focused on education advocacy — held a press conference at the Ohio Statehouse to oppose the bill.
At the press conference, Ohio State student Clovis Westlund and professor Pranav Jani joined other advocates in the fields of education, civil rights and labor to warn of the dangers they see the Higher Education Enhancement Act posing.
Proponents of the bill, including Cirino, said the bill is designed to expand intellectual diversity. In a March 15 press release, Cirino said the bill will help make sure universities “teach kids how to think not what to think.”
The bill will have to pass the Workforce and Higher Education Committee before a vote by the Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine.
