Pranav Jani was joined alongside other opponents of Senate Bill 83, which would change higher education rights for professors in Ohio. Credit: Joe Carpenter | For The Lantern
A student and professor joined others Wednesday to oppose Senator Jerry Cirino’s, R-Kirtland, bill and warn of the dangers they see posed if the Higher Education Enhancement Act is passed.
The group Honesty for Ohio Education — an organization focused on education advocacy — led the opposition at its press conference in the ladies gallery at the Ohio Statehouse with about 10 in-person attendees and hundreds more online. The conference hosted five speakers, ranging from students to teachers to labor leaders.
Clovis Westlund, a second-year in sociology and public management, leadership and policy, and associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Pranav Jani joined others working in education, civil rights and labor to warn of the dangers they see posed by the bill. These include the outlawing of mandatory diversity training, disallowing employees in higher education to strike and prohibiting the university and those working in the university from taking public positions on “controversial beliefs or policy.”
Cirino and other proponents 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 and not what to think.”
“[Senate Bill 83] really impacts everything that defines what a campus is. It has such a direct student impact, and I wanted to make sure that was presented as we discuss opposition against any threat,” Westlund said.
Westlund said he started organizing students to oppose the bill about three weeks ago and has “never seen a bill so universally despised.”
Jani, president of the Ohio State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said his 20 years at the university and decades of experience in the field of higher education “is behind my opposition to Senate Bill 83.”
Jani said the governmental overreach this bill would establish would make the university and the state of Ohio “less competitive for attracting students and faculty.”
Westlund said he sees this bill as a deterrent to many young people thinking about working in Ohio after school or moving to the state of Ohio for education.
“[Young people] will take our money out of Ohio universities; we will take our talent out of Ohio economies and we will take our energy out of Ohio communities,” Westlund said.
Jani spoke in depth about how he sees this bill as an attempt to ramp up government control on education.
“This is the real-life thought police and big brother fictionalized in George Orwell’s ‘1984,’” Jani said. “Students deserve honesty and education. They want their money spent on instruction from expert faculty, not guided by inflammatory mandates from politicians.”
Cirino said in a March 31 press release the bill is “designed to ensure free expression on campus and in the classroom,” which he said will elevate the field of higher education because the bill would “permit the marketplace of ideas to flourish, which is the ideal environment for any educational institution.”
The three other speakers were Cynthia Peeples, founding director of Honesty for Ohio Education; Robert Davis, political and legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Sean McCann, policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
A hearing, the third so far for this bill, followed the press conference, starting at 4:15 p.m.
