Ohio’s law banning diversity, equity and inclusion policies at state colleges and universitieswent into effect on June 27, 2025. Known as Senate Bill 1 (SB1), it was passed by Republicans who dominate the legislature, and it was red meat for the voter base.
Now, one year later, the author of the controversial Senate Bill 1 is giving it a raving review — but what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
When opponents of the new anti-DEI law protested at the Statehouse last year, many testified it would hurt the state’s public universities. Republican lawmakers said it was needed to combat “wokeness” at Ohio’s public colleges and universities. It was signed into law and has been in effect for the past year.
On Tuesday, Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), the sponsor of the law, stood in front of a podium at the Ohio Statehouse as he ticked through a long list of dire predictions made by opponents, calling them by name. Cirino said the warnings that Ohio’s universities would lose research opportunities didn’t come to fruition. He said the forecast that faculty would leave was also wrong, explaining 95.7% of full-time faculty stayed at their schools this past year.
Cirino also refuted the prognostication of reduced student enrollments.
“Bowling Green had their largest freshman class in history last year or last September. This was a 15% increase from the fall of '23, in a 36% increase from the fall of '24. Ohio University has grown significantly. They're now at 30,000 students. Shawnee State reports that both freshmen and total enrollment increases have been substantial since 2024. And ... it was a record freshman class coming into Ohio State. So the takeaways on that is that total enrollment has increased, not decreased. Students are not leaving Ohio in droves,” Cirino said.
The executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, Jennifer Tisone Price, said Cirino is wrong when it comes to enrollment increases.
“Ohio’s increase is only 0.57%,” she said. “It’s statistically irrelevant.”
Tisone Price said universities are losing valuable employees to nearby states like Michigan.
Free Speech?
Cirino has always said the bill was designed to fight “wokeness” in Ohio’s universities.
“We did not have free speech in our classrooms. Studies have been done right here about Ohio State, about self-censorship by students. And it was extremely high. I met with and corresponded with a number of students and faculty, for that matter, that felt that they had to self-censor themselves in order to get a good grade or to keep their job, or to get tenure or to be invited to faculty cocktail parties,” Cirino said.
Tisone Price said the anti-DEI measures themselves have created an environment where students are afraid to voice their opinions.
“There are students who are afraid of being kicked out of school if they process or speak out. You look at Ohio State, where they banned almost all public assembly and made it very difficult for students to gather to express their First Amendment rights. Again, they eliminated chalking. They have cameras everywhere. You can't put fliers up, you can't communicate with one another in the ways that students for decades have communicated with one another.”
Cirino says the work is not done
Cirino also touted the new civic centers at five major Ohio universities that were created by legislation last year. These centers were meant to fight what Cirino has called “wokeness.” Cirino said those centers have been successful in attracting positive attention and faculty.
“These professors are coming from all over the place. Faculty are not leaving Ohio. Faculty are coming to Ohio, particularly for this particular program," he said.
Cirino now wants to go a step further. He has proposed Senate Bill 461, legislation that would give those five centers the rights and privileges of an independent college at those universities. Directors at those centers would determine rank, salary and tenure of faculty and would have sole authority over hiring practices. The bill doesn’t provide any new money for the centers. The tuition and revenue collected for classes at those centers would stay with them and not go back to the schools.
Tisone Price said the centers are ideological and dangerous to the overall universities.
“They are pulling money away from colleges and universities that could be spent in the classroom, and making sure it goes to bureaucracy, compliance and artificially created, not market driven decisions about where colleges and universities have to put their money, not about where there is demand.”
The bill to expand the centers has not had hearings yet. They likely won’t happen until November at the earliest, when lawmakers come back after the general election.
