Ohio State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced Senate Bill 1 on Jan. 22, 2025. (Photo by Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal).

Cirino’s proposed overhaul failed to move forward under previous Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, but has new potential life under Speaker Matt Huffman

By: Megan Henry – Ohio Capital Journal

A Republican state senator has reintroduced a controversial proposal to massively overhaul higher education in Ohio, including a ban on diversity and inclusion efforts as well as a ban on labor strikes by faculty and staff.

Kirtland Republican state Sen. Jerry Cirino’s proposed Senate Bill 1 — the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act — was introduced during a press conference Wednesday and is similar to the bill Cirino introduced during the last General Assembly, with some additions.

“It’s called Senate Bill 1 for a reason,” Cirino said. “It is our top priority, and we’re going to move this along quickly. … We’ve already had a lot of hearings on Senate Bill 83.”

He said the bill is going to be on a fast track and Senate Higher Education Committee Chair Kristina Roegner said hearings on the bill will likely start next week.

“We are promoting more speech, not less speech, as some of our opponents have said, more discussion and debate on all topics, less indoctrination, institutional support by trustee actions and policy moves that we’re requiring the trustees to make, to support an environment of diversity of thought,” Cirino claimed.

S.B. 1 includes “virtually everything from Senate Bill 83,” said Cirino, who is the vice chair of the Ohio Senate Higher Education Committee.

 

Cirino’s former higher education bill, Senate Bill 83, was unable to make it across the finish line during the previous General Assembly. It passed in the Senate and in the House committee, but former Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitt Hill, never brought it to the House floor for a vote. The previous bill underwent 11 revisions.

Cirino made good on his promise to reintroduce a similar bill in January and the bill could have an easier time in the House now that Matt Huffman, R-Lima, is the House Speaker.  Lawmakers in the Ohio House plan on introducing a companion bill.

What is in S.B. 1?

S.B. 1 has yet to be posted online, but Cirino said the bill includes a post-tenure review, annual performance reviews of faculty, a retrenchment provision that would block unions from negotiating on tenure and public syllabuses. The bill would prohibit political and ideological litmus tests in hiring, promotion, and admissions decisions.

A big change with S.B. 1 is banning diversity, equity and inclusion courses in addition to the trainings. The former bill would have banned mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training unless it is required to comply with state and federal law, professional licensure requirements or receiving accreditation or grants.

“(DEI) has become institutionalized discrimination paid for by the taxpayers,” Cirino said.

Ohio House Rep. Bob Young, R-Dayton, said the focus of the bill shouldn’t be the DEI ban.

“Let’s truly focus on why we’re here and who we are in higher education, and that is to educate a workforce to compete globally and grow Ohio and jobs and families and attract more people to come in,” Young said.

The on faculty and staff’s ability to strike is back in the bill, something Cirino claimed was not an anti-labor issue.

“When a student signs up for instruction for a semester, they pay in advance, or they can’t go into the class,” Cirino said. “That represents a contract between the students and the institution, and because there are public institutions, therefore a contract with the state, they have to deliver that instruction and trade for the dollars per pen.”

Youngstown State University workers went on strike for a few days in 2020 over pay disputes, and Wright State University went on strike for almost three weeks in January 2019 over pay disputes and health care.

“The threat of (a strike) is what is used, and the students are being used as pawns in order to get better working hours, a better dental plan, or whatever the case may be,” Cirino said. “If we value higher education the way we do, we should also value the fact that that contract needs to be fulfilled, and nothing except force majeure should ever get in the way of students getting what they have paid in advance for.”

S.B. 1 would shorten university board of trustees terms from nine years down to six years.

“It’s been difficult to find trustees willing to make nine year commitments and the governor agrees with this,” Cirino said. “We’re talking about not just changing their terms, but also requiring new trustee training programs that would be adjudicated through the Chancellor’s Office.”

Requiring students to take an American history course is also back in the bill.

“I have become more and more convinced of that necessity over time now, since we first wrote the bill, as I’ve talked with more and more young people who have no clue about so many important things about our history and our founding documents and so on,” Cirino said.

Opposition to S.B. 1

Cirino acknowledged there will be lots of opposition with S.B. 1, just as there was with his previous bill.

“Senate Bill 1 is a misguided attempt to micromanage higher education in Ohio, imposing unnecessary restrictions on our universities, faculty, and students,” state Sen. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, said in a statement.

More than a dozen students from the Ohio Student Association protested S.B. 1 with chants of “When Black studies are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight,” and “Higher ed will be dead,” among others.

“The students that were out here protesting are probably getting extra credit for being here,” Cirino said. “I don’t believe that they have studied the bill and all the implications of this legislation and the impact on higher education in Ohio. I believe that they were asked to be here by their professors.”

Brielle Shorter, a 20-year-old Ohio State University student, was among the students who protested against the bill Wednesday.

“No, we are not here for extra credit,” she said. “That’s not how this works. I believe that this bill is being pushed very fast and very rapidly.”

Pranav Jani, president of the Ohio State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors and an English professor, said Cirino’s quip about students protesting for extra credit is “one of the most insulting things I’ve ever heard said about students.”

“It shows how out of touch he is with what happens in the classroom,” Jani said.

If this bill is signed into law, Shorter — who is from Cincinnati and wants to be a psychiatrist — said she would go out-of-state to continue her education.

“I fear that I can no longer call Ohio my home,” Shorter said. “It feels like students are being pushed out, and it feels like I might be one of them.”

Many college students have said they would move out of Ohio if this bill was signed into law, but Cirino called that “a red herring” during Wednesday’s press conference.

Education organizations were quick to oppose S.B. 1.

“(S.B. 1) uses culture war politics to attack workers’ rights and turn campuses into hostile environments for people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities,” Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said in a statement.

Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Executive Director Sara Kilpatrick hopes Cirino will listen to the students’ concerns with this bill.

“He’s not interested in hearing opposing views, which shows that this bill isn’t about intellectual diversity, but is actually about pushing a partisan agenda,” Kilpatrick said in a statement.

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.