Lost among the headline aspects of SB 1, the Ohio GOP’s bill to end professor tenure, curtail the right of faculty unions to strike, and restrict discussion of “controversial beliefs,” was a detail that may have the greatest impact on Ohio’s college students. As currently written, SB 1 threatens to end many scholarship programs that benefit thousands of Ohioans.
Buried on page 22 of its 75 pages, is a clause prohibiting colleges and universities from offering any new scholarships “that use diversity, equity, and inclusion in any manner” and requiring them to modify any existing scholarship programs so as to “eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements.” (Old scholarships that can’t be modified due to donor contracts are to be closed to additional donations, effectively setting them on course for a slow death.)
Legally, which students would be cut out of which scholarships hinges on how one defines the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Each of these words is broad and squishy, a favored clay that any competent lawyer could sculpt to their liking. Astonishingly, the authors of SB 1 did not think defining these terms was important and left them dangling like bait for litigators.
The original version of this bill, introduced more than a year ago as SB 83, used clearer terminology, prohibiting scholarships that “advantaged…students by any group identity.” Still, “group identity” is a very expansive idea and could conceivably include scholarships for swimmers, tuba players, or teens with dyslexia.
The precise definition of “DEI” has not yet been established by precedent of court rulings, but there are some operative legal definitions that will likely be relied on if SB 1 becomes law and is inevitably challenged.
Among the most definitive is to be found in an Executive Order from 2021 that specifically defines each of these three words. It defines “diversity” as “the many communities, identities, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, abilities, cultures, and beliefs of the American people, including underserved communities.” Sounds like the dyslexics, tuba players and swimmers may count after all.
It is likely that those who crafted SB 1 casually assumed that DEI only meant “races” and thought this so obvious it need not be nailed down. But I doubt all judges will think like the bill’s sponsor state Sen. Jerry Cerino does. Rather, it is highly likely that there are an array of scholarships that Mr. Cerino and his fellow GOP anti-woke warriors never imagined they would doom by their actions.
Looking through just the inventory of scholarships at my own institution, Bowling Green State University, there are dozens of scholarships that are threatened by this law.
Take, for example, the Cristoforo Colombo Award, given to a freshman of “Italian descent.”
Then there is the Blaine T. & Lauretta B. Ebert Scholarship, given to a graduate of an Ohio or Indiana high school whose “family [is] actively involved in agriculture,” or the Gaeth Family Scholarship granted to students “who were raised on an Ohio farm.” There are 77,384 white farmers in Ohio and 167 of them are African American.
Many scholarships are funded by labor unions like the IPS Construction Management Scholarship given to “student(s) whose parents’, grandparents’, or family members are active in a unionized construction trade.” (Because most construction unions maintained color bars until forced to give them up in the 1970s, there are not many students of color who could qualify on the basis of their “grandparents” membership.)
There are those who argue that race and ethnic-based scholarships should be replaced by ones crafted to expand opportunities on the basis of income. These are reasonable arguments but they don’t work here because any of the numerous scholarships given to economically “disadvantaged” students would fall within the scope of “diversity.”
Poor kids are literally a “class” of people who must by any definition be included in the idea of a “community,” an “identity,” and an “underserved” group, as the precedent of federal law would have it.
I would hope that all of our legislators in Columbus hold to the basic American values of fairness and equality enshrined in our most cherished founding documents.
Following these ideals it would be un-American to cancel scholarships granted to students on the basis of their identity as members of a racial group and not also cancel those, like those given to Italians, farmers, and even plumbers’ grandkids who are mostly all white.
Likewise, it seems rather Scrooge-like to endanger the scholarships that our poorest and most disadvantaged learners depend upon to achieve their education.
(Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor of ethnic studies at Bowling Green State University and the views expressed are entirely his own.)
