On January 29, the Ohio Student Association protested at Senate Bill 1’s first and only proponent testimony hearing, sitting silently for the hearing’s two hour duration carefully reading copies of Senate Bill 1 before marching out with a chant of “Higher ed will be dead.” Student protesters present in the hearing room far outnumbered the proponents.

Nica Delgado, a senior at Kent State, sat front row at the hearing. “We heard a lot of misguided testimony from people who will not be directly affected by this bill, who haven’t been in classrooms since before we were born— and even before my parents were born. These people don’t know what our campuses are actually like. We’re the experts on that, but Cirino won’t listen to us.”

“I don’t need someone who lives in Boston or Sacramento who’s never stepped foot on my campus telling me what my classrooms are like and what’s best for me,” said Brielle Shorter, a senior at OSU, referring to the out-of-state lobbyists who delivered nearly half of proponent testimony. “Cirino’s bringing in out-of-staters who don’t even know Ohio because he couldn’t get a single public university student to show up to support his bill.”

Senator Cirino claims a “silent majority” of students support this bill, and he once again failed to show us these students today. The reality is clear: the majority of students overwhelmingly reject SB 1. We're watching, we're engaged, and we're ready to fight for our education.

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The Ohio Student Association is a statewide grassroots organization anchored by student-led chapters on college campuses across Ohio that organize issue campaigns to fight for racial, economic, and educational justice.