Students, community brace for elimination of DEI at Ohio University

Ohio state Sen. Brian Chavez (R-30), who co-sponsored SB 1, declined to comment for this story, as did Ohio House representative Don Jones (R-95). Ohio House representative Kevin Ritter (R-94) did not respond to a request for comment.

Closure of diversity centers

While OU declined to comment on specific changes that would result should SB1 become law, The Ohio State University has already begun instituting changes to preemptively comply with the bill, providing a preview of what is to come. At OSU, these changes have included the elimination of its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Center for Belonging and Social Change, and the elimination of 16 staff positions, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio University has three centers as part of its DEI initiatives, including the Women’s Center, Pride Center, and Multicultural Center. The centers would likely close should SB1 become law.

The bill would prohibit “continuation of existing diversity, equity, and inclusion offices or departments” as well as “establishing new diversity, equity, and inclusion offices or departments.”

Walsh, who is studying journalism and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, said the university’s DEI initiatives — especially the Multicultural Center and Pride Center — have enriched her experience on campus.

“I can’t disentangle my college career from diversity, equity and inclusion,” Walsh said. “If I try to imagine my college career without those three things, there’s no point in even coming here.”

United Campus Ministry acting executive director Ari Faber, also an OU alum, spoke at last Wednesday’s protest and said they arrived on campus after being “kicked out of my parents’ home due to my queer identity.” OU’s Pride Center was “instrumental in helping me navigate an incredibly challenging and vulnerable period in my life,” Faber said.

Stokes told the Independent that support for students contributes directly to OU’s academic mission.

“When we’re thinking about … the very kind of core elements of the university’s mission — effective teaching and learning — students who have a place where they feel they belong are going to simply do better on all measures of that: grades, retention, time to degree,” Stokes said.

The centers also play a direct role in education, said Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies professor Julie White.

“The centers provide educational roles with respect to the student body at large,” White said. “So, for example, Black History Month, Women’s History Month are times during the year when the centers have been really critical to expanding the kind of educational content that happens in some classrooms and making it available to the student body at large.”

White added that it is part of “what it means to be an educated person, to take seriously the experiences of people who are less familiar to you, who have life experiences that are not yours.”

Fear for academic programs

Associate Professor of African American Studies Robin Muhammad told the Independent she expects her department will be “targeted for elimination or restructuring.”

“We’re talking about global perspectives, critical thinking,” Muhammad said. “This is not fringe-y stuff. It is at the heart of higher education, not just in the United States, but the world.”

Muhammad said this will affect what students are able to get out of an education at OU.

“If we want to be able to tell students that you’re going to be able to compete domestically as well as internationally, with other researchers, with other thinkers, with other executives, then we have to be able to say, ‘We’re going to give you know the diploma that has the kind of content that will enable you to compete right and converse,’” Muhammad said. “It’s like saying, ‘Okay, well, we’re not going to teach math.’”

White said she is less concerned about the immediate impact of SB1 on academic programs than on OU’s diversity centers, citing conversations with university leaders.

“These programs — WGSS and African American Studies, for instance, but also Environmental Studies — perform really important roles in the four year education of undergraduates,” White said. She added that curricula in those programs are “already recognized by the Ohio Department of Higher Education as accredited” and that “it’s clear” that the programs meet “degree-granting requirements.”

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OU declined to comment on specific impacts of SB1.

Tom Hodson, a retired Athens County judge and the Athens County Independent’s legal columnist, told the Independent in an email, “The bill does not specifically say those academic pursuits [in WGSS and African American Studies] must be eliminated but there is enough vagueness that I feel the university will be super cautious.”

“There is enough language in the bill for the university to put those programs on the chopping block,” he added.

However, eliminating or making major changes to those programs is not the only way of interpreting provisions in the bill, Hodson explained.

“One of the major problems with SB1 is its vagueness,” Hodson said. “That will be, I am sure, one of the attacks on it in litigation.”

Muhammad said the combined impact of eliminating departments such as African American Studies and closing the diversity centers would “rob [students] of that intellectual and community-rooted content that students here have just come to expect.”

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That work benefits everyone, Muhammad said, and is particularly important in a predominantly white institution.

“We address socio-economic disparity, and if you’re in southeastern Ohio and you don’t address that, then you’re not doing your job,” Muhammad said.

Stokes said the bill — especially its provisions around post-tenure review and a student complaint process the bill says is intended to ensure “intellectual diversity” — could result in a “chilling effect” in classrooms across the board.

Looking forward

Should SB 1 pass, Muhammad will call on OU to minimize disruption.

“It will be strategic for the university, those who are at that particular table, to find ways to mitigate the damage — that’s the most I could expect from it at the institutional level,” Muhammad said.

Stokes said OU should support marginalized students, including by offering meeting spaces for student clubs representing minority groups and supporting first-generation students and those without access to family wealth.

Community organizations are also working to address the likely fallout. United Campus Ministry, for instance, is preparing to host an influx of students, resources, and programming currently supported by OU’s Pride Center, Faber said.

Community leaders in Lancaster have organized a women’s conference in place of the one OU canceled earlier this month, WOUB reported.