SENATE BILL 83


​Summary of Senate Bill 83
​​
​TARGETS
State and Private Higher Education 
Chancellor of Higher Education
Boards of Trustees, Faculty, Staff, Students

​​​DESCRIPTION​
Creates policies for "intellectual diversity"
and controversial concepts;
Bans mandatory DEI ​programs and training;
Bans affinity groups and affirmative action policies; 
Bans public positions on controversial issues;
Bans relationships with China;
Requires US history and government courses;
Requires online posting of course syllabi;
Establishes criteria for performance evaluations;
​Bans striking and forms of collective bargaining;
Revises faculty workload policies;
Requires discipline & funding loss for violations
SPONSOR
Sen. Jerry Cirino, District 18
​
COMMITTEE
Senate Workforce and Higher Education
​
INTRODUCED 
March 14, 2023

HEARINGS
Read Testimony | Watch Hearings

BILL 
General Info | Bill As-Written | Analysis

​
​What does Senate Bill 83 do?​

Senate Bill 83 is a higher education bill directly impacting academic freedoms and instruction on controversial topics. The bill bans DEI training and programs, hiring and education about controversial concepts, affinity groups, affirmative action policies, partnerships with China, and collective bargaining. Violations impact performance evaluations, tenure, and state funding.


PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Statement of Affirmation to Receive State Funding
Private institutions must submit the following statement to the chancellor of higher education when requesting state funding:
  • The institution is committed to intellectual diversity
  • The institution is committed to free speech protection for students, staff, and faculty
  • The institution does not require diversity, equity, and inclusion courses or training for students, staff, or faculty
  • The institution complies with the new requirements for online posting of undergraduate course syllabi (refer below)
  • The institution complies with the prohibition of political and ideological litmus tests in hiring or promotion policies (refer below)

If the chancellor receives credible information indicating an institution made false affirmations, the institution must return any state funds received. 


STATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Mission Statements
Institutions must incorporate the following into their mission statements:
  • Institution will educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth
  • Institution affirms that its duty is to equip students with the intellectual skills they need to reach their own, informed conclusions on matters of social and political importance
  • Institution will ensure that "no aspect of life at the institution, within or outside the classroom, requires, favors, disfavors, or prohibits speech or action to support any political, social, or religious belief"
  • Institution affirms its dedication to "an ethic of civil and free inquiry, which respects the autonomy of each member, supports individual capacities for growth, and tolerates the differences in opinion that naturally occur in a public higher education community"
  • Institution affirms that "its duty is to treat all faculty, staff, and students as individuals, to hold them to equal standards, and to provide them equality of opportunity"

New Policy
Boards of trustees must adopt a policy with the following provisions within 90 days of passage of the bill:
  • "Intellectual Diversity": Institution must commit to "intellectual diversity" and use of an "intellectual diversity rubric" for all course reviews and student course evaluations
  • Primary Function: Institution's "primary function" must be "to practice, or support the practice, discovery, improvement, transmission, and dissemination of knowledge by means of research, teaching, discussion, and debate"
  • No Indoctrination: Institution must encourage students, faculty, or staff to form their own conclusions about "controversial matters"; faculty and staff must not "inculcate any points of view"
  • No DEI: Institution may not require mandatory DEI programs or trainings
  • No Public Positions: Institution may not take a public positions "regarding public policy controversies or any ideology, principle, concept," and that it will not require any student, faculty, or staff member to publicly express any particular viewpoint
  • No Boycotts: Institution may not participate in boycotts, disinvestments, or sanctions
  • No Hiring Standards: Institution may not use "political and ideological litmus tests in hiring and promotion," including diversity statements
  • Campus Speakers: Institution must bring intellectually diverse speakers to campus; speaker fees in excess of $500 must be posted on the institution's website within 3 clicks to home page
  • Discipline and Reporting
    • Institution must implement a range of disciplinary measures for violations and inform all students, faculty, and staff members of their protection under these policies
    • Institution must submit annual report of violations of "intellectual diversity rights" and post the report on their website within three clicks from the home page

Treatment Based on "Membership to Group": Affinity Groups, Affirmative Action, Controversial Concepts
  • Institutions must treat all faculty, staff, and students as individuals, hold every individual to equal standards, and provide every individual with equality of opportunity
  • No Segregation/Affinity Groups Institutions must not treat, advantage, disadvantage, or segregate any faculty, staff, or students by membership in groups defined by characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression
  • No Advantage/Affirmative Action: Institutions must not provide any advantage or disadvantage on the basis of membership in groups defined by characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression in admissions, hiring, promotion, tenuring, workplace conditions, or any other program, policy, or activity
  • No Policies: Prohibits any policy designed to “segregate faculty, staff, or students by group identities such as race, sex, gender identity, or gender expression,” including in orientations, majors, financial awards, residential housing, administrative employment, faculty employment, student training, and extracurricular activities
  • No Controversial Concepts: Prohibits any training, professional development, or hiring to learn about concepts that relate to inherited guilt or being advantaged or disadvantaged based on race or sex
  • Reporting & Discipline
    • Institutions must submit an annual report with statistics on academic qualifications of accepted and matriculating students, including academic qualifications and retention rates; report must be published on the institution’s website within three clicks from the home page
    • Institutions must implement a range of disciplinary sanctions on any employee who authorizes or engages in such a training; Institution must submit an annual report detailing the violations and sanctions

Undergraduate Course Syllabi
  • Institutions must publish syllabi for undergraduate courses receiving course credit on the institution's website within 3 clicks of the home page; syllabi must be searchable by keywords and phrases
  • Syllabi must contain the instructor’s name and biographical information, description of course requirements and major assignments/exams, required and recommended reading, and a description of each lecture or discussion
  • Institutions must submit an annual report to the chancellor of higher education detailing compliance with these requirements, which the chancellor must then submit to the governor, House Speaker, Senate President, and Chairs of the Higher Education committees in the House and Senate

American Government and History Courses
Beginning in 2026-2027, undergraduate students must complete three credit hours in American government or American history

Students must read and be assessed on:
  • US Constitution
  • US Declaration of Independence
  • At least 5 essays from the Federalist Papers
  • US Emancipation Proclamation
  • Gettysburg Address
  • Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students may be exempt if they completed an equivalent course.

Academic Relationships with China
  • Institutions may not accept gifts, donations, or contributions from China or any organization or individual who may be acting on behalf of China
  • Institutions may not enter into any academic partnership (including study abroad programs) with an academic institution located in China, or located in another country but associated with China
  • Institutions may not renew existing academic partnerships with an academic institution located in China may renew that agreement
  • Institutions must report all existing relationships and any past or future gifts, donations, or contributions exchanged with an entity directly or indirectly affiliated with China


FACULTY AND STAFF

Faculty Workload Policy
Institutions must update, get Board of Trustee approval, and submit their faculty workload policy to the chancellor of higher education every three years beginning in 2024

The workload policy must:
  • Define teaching workload on a per-credit-hour basis
  • Define workload elements in terms of credit hours, with a full-time 12-month workload minimum equal to 30 credit hours
  • Define “justifiable credit hour equivalents” for activities other than teaching, research, service, or administration
  • Define administrative actions (including termination) that an institution may take if a faculty member fails to comply
  • Ensure faculty not on 12-month appointments will have workload prorated based on the 30 credit hour formula

​Performance Evaluations of Faculty
  • Student Evaluation:
    • Institutions must establish a written system of faculty evaluations by students with a focus on teaching effectiveness and student learning
    • Chancellor must develop a minimum set of questions for the student evaluation, including "Does the faculty member create a classroom atmosphere free of political, racial, gender, and religious bias?"
    • Institutions must publish the “average annual numerical score” from the student evaluations for each faculty member beginning August 1, 2024 and the same date annually​
    • Evaluation accounts for at least 50% of the teaching area  annual faculty performance evaluation
  • Peer Evaluation:
    • Institutions must establish a written system of peer evaluations for faculty that focuses on professional development of teaching responsibilities​

Annual Faculty Performance Evaluation
Boards of trustees must adopt an annual faculty performance evaluation policy for every faculty member compensated by the institution and submit the policy to the chancellor of higher education every three years beginning in 2024
  • Evaluation must:
    • Be conducted by the department chairperson or equivalent administrator, reviewed and approved or disapproved by the dean, and submitted to the provost for review; if there is disagreement between the chairperson and dean, the provost shall have final decision authority
    • Use “standardized, objective, and measurable performance metrics” covering teaching, research, and other categories
    • Measure faculty based on “exceeds performance expectations,” “meets performance expectations,” or “does not meet performance expectations”
    • Student evaluations must account for at least 50% of the teaching component 
    • Establish a projected work plan for the following year
​
Post-Tenure Review
Boards of trustees must adopt a post-tenure review policy and submit to the chancellor of higher education every three years beginning in 2024
  • Review will be conducted if a tenured faculty member receives a “does not meet performance expectations” evaluation within in the same category for two out of three consecutive years, and in any category in the subsequent years
  • Department chair, dean, or provost may call for an immediate post-tenure review, for cause, for a faculty member with a “documented and sustained record of significant underperformance”
  • Process may not exceed six months, but the institution’s president can grant a one-time two-month extension
  • Provost must submit a recommended outcome of the post-tenure review process to the academic affairs committee of the board of trustees; committee will determine the final outcome

Collective Bargaining
​Prohibits the following public employees from striking and forces parties into a conciliation process:
  • “Employees of any state institution of higher education”
  • Law enforcement officers including police, state highway patrol, and deputy sheriffs
  • First responders including dispatchers and fire department members
  • Employees in correctional facilities, including corrections officers, guards, and youth leaders


GOVERNANCE

Financial Reporting 
  • For each biennial state operating budget and capital budget cycle, institutions must submit a 5-year cost summary of its institutional costs, including:
    • Instructional, staff, or maintenance costs, 
    • DEI initiatives or programming
    • Tallies of faculty, staff, and administration
  • Chancellor of higher education must present a cumulative report to the General Assembly

Education Programs for Boards of Trustees
  • Chancellor of higher education must develop and deliver a education programs for boards of trustees
  • Training must include prescribed curriculum on the trustees’ role, duties, responsibilities, and current higher education issues
  • New trustees must participate in a program at least once in their first two years on the board

Feasibility Study for 3-Year Bachelor's Degree
  • Ohio Department of Higher Education must publish a study that investigates reducing requirements in a variety of fields of study to see if programs can be reduced to three years without impacting accreditation


What is our position on Senate Bill 83?

OPPOSE
Senate Bill 83 is another sweeping attempt by Ohio legislators to mimic the worst impulses of the Florida government by importing extremist gag orders targeting higher education. This latest attack on honest education, diversity, equity, and inclusion, worker rights, and Asian culture is an affront to all who believe in honest, inclusive education and a multiracial democracy.

Rather than cultivating learning environments that help students understand complicated aspects of our shared history, uncomfortable truths, and complex systems of power, SB 83 casts an all too familiar chilling effect on education that whitewashes history, sanitizes the truth, and perpetuates discrimination and hate.

​We call on the Ohio Senate to reject SB 83 and condemn continued attacks on a student’s freedom to learn.


What have coalition partners said about SB 83?

"[A]re big employers like Intel still going to want to be here? Are we going to be able to provide these employers with employees that can think for themselves, that can communicate, that are well-rounded, that are adaptable? That’s the things that faculty help students to hone when they’re at an institution. That’s why college graduates earn more than people that only have a high school education.... We’re putting up a big red flag to faculty around the country that you don’t want to come to Ohio.”
--Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio conference of the American Association of University Professors​

"There are many local and specific reasons, but the orchestrated wave of attacks against ethnic studies, gender studies and the like is clearly associated with an attempt to roll back the changes in K-12 and higher education, and in society at large, that have taken place since the 1960s.... Ohio Senate Bill 83 isn’t just trying to roll back a few programs, but an entire legacy of protest and transformation. And by banning strikes at public universities and bringing greater political surveillance over faculty teaching and retention, the bill wants to undercut our very ability to resist such draconian changes in policy."
--Pranav Jani, Director of the Asian American Studies Program and Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ohio State University

"It’s essentially a gag order that would have a chilling effect on learning in Ohio’s public and private colleges and universities. It’s broad enough that if it were to pass, it would make people nervous, more nervous about what they can say and do, and it would inhibit the ability to really have honest conversations about the complex history of this country and this state.”
--Piet van Lier, senior researcher, Policy Matters Ohio

TAKE ACTION​​

Opposition Testimony Needed!
​

HOW TO SUBMIT TESTIMONY
**DO NOT SEND TESTIMONY UNTIL THE APPROPRIATE HEARING IS ANNOUNCED**


STEP 1:
PREPARE YOUR TESTIMONY
Read tips for preparing and submitting testimony HERE


STEP 2:
EMAIL TESTIMONY DOCUMENTS TO COMMITTEE
Email a PDF of your testimony & this completed Witness Slip to
Cirino@ohiosenate.gov


​ **IMPORTANT**
Do NOT send your testimony until the appropriate hearing is announced.
You must submit your testimony 24 hours ahead of the scheduled hearing.
Indicate in your email that you are submitting testimony and ask for a confirmation of receipt.
All testimony will be uploaded HERE


STEP 3:
ARRIVE EARLY FOR IN-PERSON TESTIMONY
Arrive at least 1 hour prior to the scheduled hearing 
There is convenient parking in the Statehouse Parking Garage