Ready for a wild ride?
https://legiscan.com/OH/text/SB83/id/2745695
Legislation in Ohio has passed the house to micromanage the public post-secondary system. It now goes to the senate. It is being opposed by nearly every post-secondary association and freedom of speech association and is generally a contradictory mess. Don’t believe me? Well here’s the best (worst) bits:
Every institution must change its mission statement to affirm that it is committed to tolerating differences in opinion, but they must also allow students to formally evaluate professors on their ideology and require departments to teach controversial topics (being those that are believed by a substantial number of Americans).
I’m sure the faculty of science will enjoy needing to include a class about how the moon landing was faked and the earth is flat (both believed by 10% of the US).
They must both “Prohibit political and ideological litmus tests in all hiring, promotion, and admissions decisions” while also requiring that promotion decisions are based at least partially on student’s evaluation of the professor’s ideology.
They must both treat all equally while being prohibited to provide the support required for those who were treated unequally by other levels of education. Essentially a return to the 1970s era post-secondary access.
And strangest of all they will be mandated to collect and report on all demographic data including race and sex, and report publicly on academic achievement by those disaggregated demographics while at the same time are prohibited to have any policies that use any of the collected data for improving results. If information is mandated to be collected but not used by one group, then you can guarantee that it will be used by those mandating it. And since those mandating it has no way of actually using that data to improve things then the only thing I can see is that it’s being collected not for improvement but for something else.
Finally, it bans all sex segregated extracurricular activities and residence housing. Which seems strange considering other things the republicans have been complaining about the last few years.
I’m more than a little concerned at the US trying to burn down its post-secondary system, and very worried that the same ideas will come up here (some already are).
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