Inside Education and Health Sciences

By Emily Lohmann

On April 19, I attended the opposition hearing for Ohio Senate Bill 83 following a call from the Ohio School Psychologists Association. This bill intends to prohibit mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs; prohibit student affinity groups based on racial, ethnic, or gender identity; limit instruction on climate change, politics, social justice, racism, and gender equity; prohibit all employees at universities from striking; and prohibit academic relationships with China. As one would imagine, this would drastically change many of our programs, courses, and faculty/employee working conditions at the University of Dayton.

Attending the opposition hearing gave me much perspective of the consequences of the bill, as it would impact many facets of our educational experiences. I began my testimony detailing why I value DEI work, but I focused the bulk of my testimony on how this bill would affect our program and profession. This includes: a weakened education on how to best serve students within our public school system and loss of National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) approval of all programs in Ohio, resulting in a greater shortage of our profession in the state. I emphasized the importance of our role in the school system, highlighting that without school psychologists in the field, schools would be at risk of not educating students with disabilities, making districts vulnerable to lawsuits. This could also lead to a lack of federal funding per the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, leading to failure of our public education system.

Of course, there are countless reasons to oppose this bill, but I tried to give the unique perspective of a school psychology graduate student and focus the majority of my time on that topic. The hearing began at 4 p.m., and as the 39th person to testify I did not speak until 8:30 p.m. It was amazing to see the morale around opposing this bill and have the opportunity to voice my opinion to senators.

Emily Lohmann is in her third year of the University of Dayton's school psychology program and will graduate in August. She chaired the student-led DEI committee last year, and conducted her thesis on Black students' perspectives of social emotional learning.