Ingram Condemns Passage of Senate Bill 83
Today, state Senator Catherine Ingram (D-Cincinnati) issued the following statement after the Ohio Senate voted to pass Senate Bill 83, the highly controversial “Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act.”
“Unfortunately, when the sponsor of this bill claims to uphold and protect freedom of speech, SB 83 does just the opposite,” said Ingram. “I continue to hear the sentiment that ‘conservatives need a voice,’ but the reality is Ohio has been gerrymandered so horribly they can’t help but have a voice.”
Among a litany of changes to Ohio’s higher education laws, S.B. 83 would prohibit all higher education employees from striking and ban institutions from having mandated diversity, equity and inclusion programs. It also would bar colleges and universities from endorsing or opposing as an institution any controversial beliefs, policies, specified concepts or specified ideologies.
More than 300 Ohioans and organizations, including the American Association of University Professors Ohio Conference and Ohio Education Association, submitted testimony in opposition to S.B. 83 while it was receiving hearings in the Senate Workforce and Higher Education Committee.
Critics have argued the legislation is an unnecessary infringement upon the principles of free speech and academic freedom that will discourage prospective students from attending colleges and universities in Ohio and professors from seeking employment at these institutions.
“I’ve heard a lot of people talk about education, not indoctrination; course correction; etcetera; but I would be remiss if I had not stood up today and spoken for the hundreds of people who are not clowns and deserve to be heard and deserve to be responded to by the sponsor of the bill," said Ingram. "We are not Florida. We keep singing the same song that we are trying to take care of everybody but the reality is we're not.”
S.B. 83 now goes to the House for consideration, where its companion legislation, House Bill 151, received its second hearing today.