SB 83 Hearing Next Week

Next Wednesday, November 15 at 10:00 am in Room 017 of the Ohio Statehouse, the Ohio House Higher Education Committee will be holding a second hearing on Substitute Senate Bill 83. As of right now, the bill is not slated to be voted upon at this hearing.

The committee will hear a total of one hour of opponent testimony, as well as one hour of proponent testimony. Oral testimony will be limited to five minutes. We highly encourage members to submit testimony and to show up if you can be there. We must continue to convey that there is still widespread opposition to this latest version of SB 83.

Here are several links to help with testimony preparation:

Full Bill Text of SB 83 -11

Comparison Document (changes between Senate-passed and -11 versions)

OCAAUP Synopsis

Committee Notice for November 15 Hearing

Witness Slip (must accompany your testimony submission)

Testimony Template

Testimony and witness slip must be submitted to OHRHigherEducationCommittee@ohiohouse.gov 24 hours in advance of the hearing, so no later than Tuesday, November 14 at 10:00 am.

If you are able to testify in person on Wednesday, please email OCAAUP Executive Director Sara Kilpatrick at sara@ocaaup.org so that she knows who will be there. Due to the imposed time constraints, we do not know how many people will be able to address the committee, but we will do our best to help facilitate the hearing so that as many people as possible have the opportunity to speak. You can also email Sara with any questions.

Testimony Workshop This Sunday

This Sunday, November 12 at 3:00 pm, we are holding a workshop in conjunction with the Honesty for Ohio Education coalition to discuss the latest version of SB 83 and to provide a testimony training. This is a great opportunity to get up to speed on the bill and learn how to write and present effective testimony.

You can register here for the workshop.

We can’t take our foot off the gas now! Our unrelenting activism has halted a bill that most people thought would be a slam dunk. Please consider submitting testimony, even if written only, so that we can continue to show that SB 83 is bad for students, bad for higher education, and bad for Ohio!

Yesterday, Ohio Senate Bill 83 received a second hearing in the House Higher Education Committee. During this hearing, the committee formally adopted an 11th iteration of the legislation.

In what is a variation on the usual practice, bill sponsor Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), gave another round of sponsor testimony, defending this new version of the bill with support from Chair Tom Young (R-Washington Twp.), who specifically defended the retrenchment language in the bill.

You can view the full bill text, as well as the comparison document for this -11 (“dash 11”) version. You can also view the committee hearing on The Ohio Channel.

Since we so rarely get to share positive news about the legislation, let’s start with the positive changes to the bill:

• Completely eliminates the no-strike provision. All campus unions would maintain the right to strike.
• Removes the development of the American government/history course from the purview of the chancellor and instead allows institutions to develop the course–assuaging accreditation concerns.
• Removes references to “specified concepts” and “specified ideologies,” which were essentially blacklisted topics. However, the bill still contains language about “controversial beliefs or policies,” which it describes as, but does not limit to, the topics of climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, immigration policy, marriage, abortion, or diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The bill restricts institutional speech and contains unclear, broad language about ensuring that faculty allow students to reach their own conclusions on such topics.

Here are the most concerning pieces that remain unchanged and therefore render the bill completely unacceptable from the AAUP perspective:

• Maintains that faculty unions cannot bargain over retrenchment, evaluations, and tenure. The intent is to make all faculty at-will employees without any real job protections. The bill provides an overly broad definition of retrenchment that essentially would give carte blanche to boards of trustees and administrations to shutter programs and terminate faculty positions.
• Maintains annual faculty evaluations for all full-time faculty and specific, weighted parameters for those evaluations. This is unnecessary micromanagement, given that institutions already have their own tailored systems of evaluations.
• Mandates post-tenure review and would give broad authority to administrators to call for post-tenure review at any time, which would effectively eliminate meaningful tenure in Ohio.
• Opens faculty to unsubstantiated complaints about restricting “intellectual diversity” in their classrooms.
• Eases public syllabi requirements for community colleges, but maintains that detailed syllabi and instructor contact information and course schedules be easily accessible and searchable on university websites. This proposed requirement is intended to intimidate faculty and would open up faculty to harassment by off-campus trolls.

As you can glean, while the new bill draft makes a few steps in the right direction, it still is unyielding on threats to academic freedom, faculty job security, and union rights. The de facto elimination of tenure protections and job security makes bargaining over any other matters a much more hazardous proposition. Moreover, the de facto elimination of job security eliminates any meaningful academic freedom because it effectively removes meaningful standards for teaching and grading.

If you watch the hearing, you will see that Sen. Cirino struggles to answer important questions about many pieces of the bill. He resorts to claiming that his bill is well-intentioned and being misrepresented by his critics–and that he is relying on good administrators and trustees to do the right things. But, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia once said, “We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators.”

Despite multiple attempts to communicate with Sen. Cirino and Rep. Young on this bill, they have failed to engage at all with OCAAUP or the other two major education unions in Ohio–the Ohio Federation of Teachers and Ohio Education Association. Sen. Cirino and Rep. Young are intent on hearing from only those within their echo chambers, and the small changes we have seen from each iteration of the bill to the next have been made begrudgingly because they knew they did not yet have the necessary votes in the House.

As of now, it is expected that the committee will meet again on November 15, which is also a session day for the House of Representatives. Rep. Young was reported to have said that the committee may allow for proponent and opponent testimony on that day. Conceivably, the committee could pass the bill and send it to the full House floor for a vote all in the same day. However, at this time, it is our understanding that the bill still does not have sufficient support from the requisite number of committee members or from House leadership. We will keep you posted as we obtain more information.

What actions can members and allies take?

1) Sign on to the We Are Ohio union coalition’s letter opposing SB 83. We are Ohio sent this letter–now signed by more than 100 Ohio unions–to State Representatives on September 11, but the sign-on version is an opportunity for individuals and other organizations to add their names and show even greater and more unified opposition. Feel free to share!

2) Focus calls and emails on Speaker Stephens and the Republican committee members who we believe are most open to hearing our objections to the bill:

Rep. Justin Pizzulli: 614-466-2124 or Rep90@OhioHouse.gov
Rep. Gail Pavliga: 614-466-2004 or Rep72@OhioHouse.gov
Rep. Gayle Manning: 614-644-5076 or Rep52@OhioHouse.gov
Rep. Nick Santucci: 614-466-5441 or Rep64@OhioHouse.gov
House Speaker Stephens: 614-466-1366 or Rep93@OhioHouse.gov

Let them know that the “dash 11” version of SB 83 is still unacceptable–that it would harm academic freedom, union rights, job protections, quality education, and the ability to attract and keep the best and brightest students and faculty. Feel free to share personal experiences about your teaching and your institution.

3) Talk to your colleagues, write op-eds, and show your opposition in any other manner that is personally meaningful and professional.

Thank you for your continued activism! It has undoubtedly made a difference!

Something that the late, great John McNay wrote to the Senate about SB 83 in May remains true today: “This bill can’t be salvaged, deserves to be killed, and we need to start over to make a genuine effort to address the real problems in higher education.”

A Message from OCAAUP Executive Director Sara Kilpatrick on the Passing of Dr. John T. McNay:

Ohio AAUP Members,

It is with immense personal and professional sadness that I share the news of the passing of former long-time OCAAUP President Dr. John T. McNay on October 27. He was 66 years old.

John had been a Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash for 23 years until his passing. With a focus on Cold War history, he was a prolific writer and passionate educator. His scholarship on U.S. presidential decisions for peace elicited an invitation to speak at the prestigious Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo, Norway, which he accepted in 2016. 

Prior to becoming OCAAUP President, John was an activist with his local union, UC-AAUP, and served a term as their president. During his time at the helm of UC-AAUP, he was an outspoken opponent of the infamous union-busting legislation, Senate Bill 5. John even wrote a book about the SB 5 fight: Collective Bargaining and the Battle of Ohio: The Defeat of Senate Bill 5 and the Struggle to Defend the Middle Class. After the defeat of Senate Bill 5, John decided to run for OCAAUP President and served four terms between 2012 and 2020. 

As OCAAUP President, John was a dedicated and unflappable advocate for faculty, higher education, and union rights. John lobbied and testified to the Ohio General Assembly on numerous occasions and co-wrote higher education reports with me. He had many op-eds published over the years about the plethora of issues we face in higher education, most recently in regards to Senate Bill 83. He lended his support to AAUP chapters, unionization efforts, and individual faculty members facing issues.

Following his tenure as OCAAUP President, John was elected to the National AAUP Council, a position which kept him on the OCAAUP Board in an ex-officio capacity. He also served as Chair of the National AAUP Government Relations Committee. Just this past July, John and I presented at a session about political interference at the AAUP Summer Institute. Ever the historian, he gave a historical perspective on the origins of the attacks faculty face today. 

In 2018, John had a successful kidney transplant, thanks to the generosity of his sister, Lynn. It gave John five more years of a good life that he may not have had otherwise. Unfortunately, it was just within the last couple of months that he faced complications from his anti-rejection medication, which ultimately led to his untimely passing. John’s sisters Lynn and Pam were by his side at the time of his death. 

John wasn’t just my boss for many years. He was a close friend–more like family. He was beloved by just about everyone who knew him. A genuinely good person who used his talents for good. The AAUP, Ohio higher education, and this world are better off because of John McNay. John wouldn’t mind that we are sad about losing him, but he would want us to honor his memory by keeping up the good fight. 

Rest in peace, John. Thank you for everything. We will miss you, always. 

As we reported to you at the end of August, Senate Bill 83 sponsor, State Senator Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) has been working with State Representative Tom Young (R-Washington Twp.), Chair of the House Higher Education Committee, to push SB 83 over the finish line after it failed to pass as part of the state budget bill.

Recently, the “-8” (“dash eight”–in other words, the eighth version of the bill) of SB 83 was unveiled. You can view the full bill text, as well as the comparison document. Unfortunately, this version works off of the Senate-passed version of the legislation, which is reflected in the comparison document and not the “-7” version that some House Republicans had worked on–a version that took out many of the teeth in the bill.

This “-8” draft has not been formally adopted, but the expectation is that it will be formally accepted by the House Higher Education Committee when it resumes meetings in October. The committee was supposed to meet much sooner, but House Speaker Jason Stephens revised the House’s session calendar, significantly constricting the number of House business days through the end of the calendar year.

Here is a summary of what the -8 version changes from the Senate-passed bill:

-Removes staff unions from the no-strike provision, leaving only faculty unions without the ability to strike.

-Specifies that the prohibitions on bargaining subjects for faculty unions (workload, retrenchment, tenure, evaluations) would take effect immediately upon the bill taking effect, instead of having a delayed effective date.

-Provides a broad definition of “retrenchment,” which would make it much easier for administrations to terminate academic programs and faculty positions.

-Adds an appeal process for final faculty evaluations.

-Reduces from 50% to 25% the weight that student evaluations are given in the teaching portion of annual faculty evaluations.

-Allows community colleges to supply a “general syllabus” to satisfy the public syllabi component of the bill.

-Removes the requirement that institutions have to change their mission statements to include certain language, and, instead, requires that language to be included into a “statement of commitment.”

-Removes “gender identity” from the list of “specified concepts.”

-Requires institutions to establish complaint processes for perceived violations of the policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, “intellectual diversity,” and “specified concepts.”

-Removes references to “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” or “gender expression” in the sections that require institutions to provide equality of opportunity and prohibit any type of “segregation,” leaving only “race,” “ethnicity,” and “sex” in those sections. Also requires institutions to develop a complaint process for perceived violations.

-Clarifies that the prohibitions on DEI training don’t preclude institutions from providing continuing education to public safety officers, but creates some confusion as to whether DEI-related concepts can be part of that continuing education.

-Reduces trustee terms from nine years to six years.

-Makes changes to the section creating new endowment rules.

SB 83 remains a sweeping piece of legislation that proposes an unprecedented level of political interference and micromanagement into the affairs of Ohio’s public colleges and universities.

Throughout its multiple iterations, the bill has been a series of contradictions on freedom of speech, claiming to promote “intellectual diversity” while simultaneously dictating the manner in which certain topics can be discussed and eliminating other topics from any discussion. Serious concerns about academic freedom and tenure remain.

The untenable mandates in SB 83 would shift money, time, and attention from student learning to bloated bureaucracy. It would make it more difficult to attract students and faculty to Ohio institutions; in the long run, Ohio will become even less competitive economically.

What actions can members and allies take?

1) Sign on to the We Are Ohio union coalition’s letter opposing SB 83. We are Ohio sent this letter–signed by more than 70 Ohio unions–to State Representatives on September 11, but the sign-on version is an opportunity for individuals and other organizations to add their names and show even greater and more unified opposition. Feel free to share!

2) Use this form to contact House members. There is a form letter provided, but we encourage you to personalize the message. You can share this, too!

3) Talk to your colleagues, write op-eds, and show your opposition in any other manner that is personally meaningful and professional.

Due to the fact that the House Higher Education Committee is unlikely to meet until October, now is our opportunity to fill the vacuum and continue voicing our opposition. We do not believe this new version of the bill contains the kinds of significant changes needed to garner more support among House Republicans, but we can better ensure that is the case by once again building a groundswell of opposition.

Thank you for your continued activism! It has undoubtedly made a difference in this fight!

Despite the massive public opposition to Senate Bill 83, the legislature plans to take up the bill again this fall. We are asking our members and allies to fight back once again and encourage the House of Representatives to reject SB 83!

Please use this form to contact House members.

SB 83 had passed the Ohio Senate but did not have sufficient support in the House Higher Education Committee to advance. The Senate inserted SB 83’s language into the state budget bill, but it was ultimately removed by the budget conference committee, again because it didn’t have the necessary support in the House of Representatives.

SB 83 sponsor, Sen. Jerry Cirino, is attempting to work with House Higher Education Committee Chairman, Rep. Tom Young, to push the bill over the finish line. We know that Sen. Cirino will attempt to “divide and conquer” labor by removing staff unions from the no-strike provision of the bill, leaving just faculty unions without the ability to strike, as he told The Columbus Dispatch in this article.

Make no mistake that our sisters and brothers in the labor movement still stand with us unequivocally. A threat to any labor is a threat to all labor.

The pending version of SB 83 in the House not only bans the right to strike, but it also prohibits faculty from bargaining over certain subjects–tenure, retrenchment, workload, and evaluations. Under the guise of not wanting to disrupt student learning, the true intent of this portion of SB 83 is to weaken the power of faculty to advocate for fair working conditions, which are students’ learning conditions.

SB 83 remains a sweeping piece of legislation that proposes an unprecedented level of political interference and micromanagement into the affairs of Ohio’s colleges and universities, both public and private.

Throughout its multiple iterations, the bill has been a series of contradictions on freedom of speech, claiming to promote intellectual diversity while simultaneously dictating the manner in which certain topics can be discussed and eliminating other topics from any discussion. It would ban institutions from requiring the types of trainings that ensure all students, no matter their backgrounds, can succeed.

The untenable mandates in SB 83 would shift money, time, and attention from student learning to bloated bureaucracy. It would make it harder to attract students and faculty to Ohio institutions; in the long run, Ohio will become even less competitive economically.

None of this enhances higher education. Instead, this is a bill deeply rooted in Culture-War ideology. In an effort to score political points, the legislature could do real, irreversible damage to our institutions of higher education. We must stop SB 83! Use this form to email State Representatives to ask them to reject the bill.