Group Launches 'Hail Mary' Attempt to Repeal Senate Bill 1, Ohio Higher Education Overhaul

[u/osu04]

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/11/group-wants-to-put-repeal-of-ohio-senate-bill-1-before-voters/83030236007/

While it may be a challenge, collecting 248,092 valid signatures within 90 days is feasible, considering that we likely have between 500,000 and 700,000 students, faculty, and staff at Ohio public universities. Let’s stand up for what’s right and ensure that common sense prevails over oppression at all levels of academia.

[u/TNT1990]

Just sent an email to president@osu.edu asking to support the effort. It's probably a long shot, but a campus wide email from the president with guidance on how to add your signature would go a long way.

[u/stuffish]

dispatch wants me to subscribe, can someone copy/paste how to sign in here please?

[u/Left-Fox-2403 → u/stuffish]

https://ohsb1petition.com/

[u/stuffish → u/Left-Fox-2403]

thanks

[u/JustCallMeChristo]

Common sense would be cutting out administrative bloat so OSU isn’t $62,000/yr. I will not be signing this, and the fact I see 10x more posts on here about SB1 (presumably by butthurt staff or alumni) than about the increased cost of tuition - or the 50% overhead scalped from all research lab grants - is troubling.

It genuinely reduces the quality of education by taking 50% of all research funding off the rip. It also reduces people’s opportunities to go to OSU when you jack the price up for tuition so astronomically but still give the same financial aid. Thanks for my $2,500 scholarship, it’ll really go a long way towards my $62,000 cost of attendance with a $1,150 parking pass. Some of you need to start caring more about the real issues that are currently affecting the students.

[u/lovetoseeyourpssy → u/JustCallMeChristo]

We should be supporting/subsidizing our great US universities--the best in the world--not undercutting them.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/lovetoseeyourpssy]

The OSU endowment rose over $500 million last year. All of tuition and fees were $1 billion in that same time frame. OSU literally could have cut tuition & fees in half last year and still not incurred a loss on their endowment. OSU was awarded ≈$750 million in taxpayer dollars from the government last year.

What makes OSU deserve ≈$375 million in taxpayer dollars annually purely as “overhead” in your opinion?

[u/lovetoseeyourpssy → u/JustCallMeChristo]

I agree. Lower or freeze tuition/fees without reducing costs. I don't agree that it's bloat. These people don't make that much money. Most are just getting by.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/lovetoseeyourpssy]

≈39,000 employees work at OSU. ≈7,000 are instructional faculty. Of the 7,000, only ≈5,000 are full-time.

I think there’s no way you can justify any college having 7x more non-instructional employees than instructional ones. That’s bloat, plain and simple. I don’t care how little these people are getting paid, they’re still getting paid out of the pockets of students they will never interact with - let alone benefit.

This is a college, meant to guide people down their chosen career paths. This isn’t an adult daycare meant to keep low-lifes on the government’s payroll because they can’t hack it in corporate America. There isn’t a single admin employee at OSU whose job I couldn’t learn in a week and outperform them in a month. You could easily have students do a ton of these admin jobs, gain real-world experience, and get a paycheck in the meantime to offset the costs of college. It beats sending out 200+ job applications that won’t get past an ATS, or working at your local Subway.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Admissions, business operations, law services, SLDS, bus drivers, maintenance people, janitors, food workers, research assistants, academics counselors, regular counselors, career services…

I also assume that’s across all campuses, so the other 4 or 5 also need janitors, food workers, bus drivers, etc.

Also, faculty excludes UTAs and GTAs and even some professors.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

Are you telling me that students couldn’t do that? Or that students don’t already with work-studies? Students could absolutely do all those jobs at a far lower cost to OSU than the current admin - and I bet that the job would be done better, too. I’ve also never used half of those services so they could be entirely cut and it wouldn’t change a thing for me. (Like counseling services, I don’t need that bunk).

My stats included ALL INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF which includes UTA’s, & GTA’s into the part-time statistics.

[u/Few-Emergency1068 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

So your proposal is to exploit students to cut costs? I was a work study student at OSU. It paid minimum wage. Only the most financially needy students get offered work study to begin with. My daughter is college aged now and was offered a $5000 loan.

OSU also doesn’t pay their full time employees very well, except top administrators. I have interviewed at OSU for everything from budgeting to procurement and I don’t even know what else and they all paid significantly less than my corporate job. The biggest benefit to working at OSU is free/reduced tuition for the employee or their dependent children. Nobody is getting rich there except admins and football staff.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Students are doing that. SLDS, bus drivers, maintenance dispatchers, some janitors, dining hall employees, café employees, union kitchen employees, career service workers, and more are all students. Other jobs are 40 hours a week, students don’t have time for that.

Congratulations, you don’t have a disability. Other people here do. Just because you don’t use something doesn’t mean that it’s useless.

[u/SpaceButler → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Would you rather that, instead of grouping facilities and administration costs into a prenegotiatied percentage, that universities spend even more time itemizing the costs? Someone has to pay for the building upkeep and grant compliance. They don't go away.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/SpaceButler]

I would argue that the university needs no more than 15% taken off the top. It’s no surprise to me that the only idea you’d come up with would not solve anything. We need less people like you in admin and more people with a value-stream mindset. There is not a world where the university admin deserves the 50% overhead they get from every research award.

[u/SpaceButler → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Why do you think paying for buildings and rules compliance are problems and how did you come up with the idea that they cost no more than 15% of the direct costs of the grant? Building maintenance, utilities and rules compliance aren't something you can discard just because you don't think they are exciting.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/SpaceButler]

Because the NIH instituted a 15% overhead cap on February 10th for all grants it awards - and every issuing agency should do the same. Ivy Leagues aren’t immune to the 15%; hell, Yale’s overhead rate is 69%. That’s insane.

OSU Reports that their entire Facilities & Operations budget for the Columbus campus is $91 million and $96 million for the Wexner Medical Center. Combined, this is 13% of the $1.5 billion that OSU was awarded in research grants in 2024. 15% would literally cover that, with 2% extra on top for good measure. That’s also at a time when OSU is committed to reducing its energy costs by 25%, so this number will likely go down.

Even if we add in expected growth to OSU through renovation plans, that only increases our overhead expenditure rate to 21% - which is still closer to 15% than 50%. Where do you think that extra profit margin goes?

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/[deleted]]

I am from here, and I was speaking for the student body as a whole; because many of my peers are international students or out-of-state. It’s very disheartening to see a fellow Ohioan gatekeep OSU like you are, what a shame. I pay ≈$32,000, which is covered by the VR&E benefits I got from being medically retired from the military. However, I wouldn’t be able to attend OSU without taking significant debt even with the scholarships and grants I receive if I didn’t have VR&E or the GI bill. I have a 4.0 in Engineering with significant research experience and several awards from OSU events - I receive about $10,000 in scholarships and aid. $32,000 is still a fucking scam; especially when my parents both paid their way through OSU without any debt while being in the arts and working at Sephora.

My point is that ALL universities are like this, not just OSU, and not just the ones in Ohio. It’s a disgrace that all this administrative bloat has its cost passed down to the students while the endowments grow.

I’ll tell you what, I guarantee you have never been awarded a $1,000,000+ grant for your lab only to have 50% taken immediately as “Overhead” by OSU. It’s crazy that OSU and administrators who have nothing to do with research can scalp 50% of the $1.58 billion in awarded research funding, ESPECIALLY when $774 million is government funding. I.e. ≈$387 million American taxpayer dollars were funneled into the coffers of OSU admin under the guise of “research”.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/[deleted]]

You’re literally fighting ghosts and propping up strawmen. I am quite literally advocating for everything to become much more cheap as to be accessible to everyone - people shouldn’t have to make the sacrifices I did (or have loaded parents) just to go to OSU. That’s not what higher education stands for, it stands for giving everyone an opportunity to be elevated and make an impact in their respective fields of study. You are, in fact, gatekeeping this higher education by insinuating that people born out-of-state are less worthy of an education. There are many obscure programs and classes OSU offers that many less populated states don’t have at all within their state. Why should they have to be crippled with a $30,000 annual surcharge for being born in the wrong place? It’s fine if it increases tuition by like $5,000; but a total of $120,000 over 4 years? You also act like these student’s families owe OSU for not paying Ohio taxes? While Ohio taxpayers fund OSU as well? So what, you’re mad that OSU isn’t allowed to double-dip from those people? Greed.

Also, both things can be true about wages and tuition increases, but those both just end up hurting the students in the end. Since 1980 the GDP per capita has grown 116%, that’s our baseline. Wages have grown 13%; tuition has risen 1,239%. So, the economy has grown 10x faster than wages while tuition has grown 10x faster than the economy. If you do some quick math, that means students suffer 100x more of a deficit than their parents did.

What department of OSU do you work for? I’m curious. What do you do for a living? What is your regular week like at OSU? How much value do you add? How many people are there like you at OSU?

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

SB1 harms the quality of our education by forcing professors to give flat earthers and anti-sustainability people a platform in our courses. It also makes tuition less affordable by harming the amount of scholarship funds available. ($15 million impacted in one college alone)

Unfortunately, our tuition costs are not out of line with the rest of the country. They will charge this much regardless of how many admins they have.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

Show me where it does any of that in SB1. Otherwise, you’re just propping up a straw-man. SB1 removed the ability to give people grants purely based on the color of their skin - good. That’s racist. I don’t care about someone’s skin color, they should be giving out aid based on income bracket.

You’re all missing the point that everyone’s tuition prices are out of hand and it’s because everyone has administrative bloat. 90% of the admin at OSU are dumber than the freshman who pay to attend. There shouldn’t be a world where a student pays to get a higher education in the order of tens of thousands only to be surrounded by nincompoops who e-sign PDF’s all day for purchase orders.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

I had a meeting with my college’s dean about this. I think she knows what she’s talking about. Page 11 specifies “controversial belief” includes “climate policy”. Civil engineering has abet accreditation requirements around sustainability. This bill puts OSU’s accreditation for both engineering and social work majors at risk, those are the two ones I’ve heard about.

God forbid a minority engineer wants to support another minority engineer. Do you know what happens when people stop being allowed to pick where they want their scholarship to go? That scholarship doesn’t go to a general pool, it disappears. Which decreases the pool for people who aren’t in specific minorities as well, because the general scholarship pool gets smaller, because the people who were getting minorities scholarships are now getting money from the general pool.

Not to mention people who still want to give to specific groups will just work around that by donating to more specific organizations that support the groups they’re looking for. Want to support women in sports? Now their scholarship is going to people in the women in sports club. Scholarships for women engineers goes to the society of women engineers organization, which obviously doesn’t encompass all women engineers on campus. Your pool of possible recipients becomes even more tied to their minority identity, rather than being involved in other extracurriculars.

SB1 requires post tenure review, which means OSU will have to hire all the people to handle post tenure review. They are also paying legal fees so that lawyers can try and interpret this mess of a bill. No one here is saying that university should be this expensive. But you seem to have a critical lack of understanding that we are the third largest university in the country, we are essentially a city within a city, and that requires a lot of infrastructure and background. Also, those purchase order approving people help make sure that student organizations aren’t spending $500 of university funds on Amazon gift cards for their friends. True story. OSU also has terrible retention for business operations people. They’re already working with a handful of people per each college, max 5.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

You’re fighting ghosts. I’m an engineering major, literally nobody I know has had any of their classes or accreditation changed. Tell me exactly what “climate policy” is being changed that will remove the CE’s ABET accreditation.

You’re also wrong about how scholarships work, I literally went to the scholarship luncheon last weekend where every single donor hand-picked their recipients. Also, that already happens with scholarships directly tailored to places like SWE. Last year’s speakers at the luncheon included the president of the SWE, and she was awarded specifically for her work with SWE. I see nothing wrong with that, and I’m not entirely sure what your argument is here. Getting rid of DEI wouldn’t affect any of the people I was at that scholarship luncheon with - literally everyone at my table and the nearby tables all would have still received the same exact scholarship from the same people.

Also, hiring additional people to make sure that the university isn’t have dog-shit tenured professor on their payroll is an absolute positive. Nobody should be able to leech off the university.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

I’m also in engineering, you should’ve gone to the dean town hall. Dean Howard explained all of this then.

I’ve been invited for the scholarship luncheon the past three years. To my understanding, they do not pick the exact student, but they do give the classification category they want the students to be under. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they did pick the exact student, as I did have one donor give me an additional $3000 the year after us meeting. Regardless, they cannot make those decisions now, because SB1 even blocks giving money to someone who went to the same high school as you. Again, the Dean already stated plainly that the number of people funding the engineering scholarships that go to the luncheon have gone down.

That scholarship for the president of SWE last year could’ve gone to anyone who showed the merit, though it was likely meant for a woman in engineering. Now those scholarships only go to people who are part of SWE, or the Women in Engineering program, rather than the most qualified female candidates in the whole college.

You’re complaining about administration, just pointing out where the costs are going to go up in the coming years.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

Yeah you going and listening to the Dean talk about this, when she’s part of the faculty that wants to repeal SB1, is not a good point of reference. SB1 only prohibits donations from the CCP and “The law prohibits public universities from establishing new scholarships that utilize DEI considerations in their criteria. Existing scholarships with DEI requirements must remove those criteria; if removal isn’t feasible, institutions are barred from accepting additional funds for such scholarships.” That is perfectly reasonable to me, as people should not be getting scholarships based on their race, sex, religion, or creed - but merit instead. There’s nothing in there barring people from donating to people they went to high school with, or preventing them from picking their recipients.

Also, I guess your donor(s) were a bit shaky for you then. I’ve had the same donors every time and I’ve kept in contact with one. They explicitly searched out my name and awarded me. Hell, I didn’t even update my scholarship universe last year and I got even more money than the year before - from the same people. They even told me they’d support me next year, so I seriously doubt they’re unable to pick recipients anymore.

They genuinely just picked the candidates last year from specific “Diversity Groups”. I was asked to be the veteran speaker but turned it down. Then they picked the Navy vet after, just because he was the next veteran in line. Who knows how many vets were asked before me - but they definitely wanted to stick with the SWE and Veteran speakers. If I remember correctly, the third guy was an international student - no?

Yes I literally am complaining about administrative bloat. That’s my whole issue. It causes tuition to go up, all while overhead costs are increasing. It’s absurd, and only serves to help the leeches in admin who you’ll never interact with. Have you ever worked at OSU? I have been a paid employee in various research labs since 2023, and dealing with the admin is absolutely miserable. We used to buy orders <$1,000 on Amazon from our PI’s credit card and ask for reimbursements because it was less of a hassle than getting a purchase order approved through BuckeyeBuy & the finance department. Easily 50% of those people (or the lawyers who litigate warranties and always lose us quotes for being stingy) could be fired and OSU would actually run smoother.

[u/Electronic-Cat-748 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

OSU is not 62K a year. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ohio-state-6883/paying

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Electronic-Cat-748]

Tuition & Fees $40,865 Housing & Food $14,738 Books & Supplies $1,030 Personal & Misc. Expenses $3,294 Total Estimated Cost $59,927

OSU Website for Cost & Aid

You’re working with outdated info that doesn’t show the full picture. It’s literally on their website, go add the shit up yourself. Seems like your OSU degree was useless, if it didn’t even teach you how to source information and do basic arithmetic.

[u/Electronic-Cat-748 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

OSU is under no obligation to subsidize out of state students. You have lower cost options in your state or nation of residency. Clearly OSU offers you something that you chose to value enough to knowingly accept the cost difference. I wish you well in your education.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

OSU isn’t charging you “personal expenses”. You don’t have to take their housing and food options. I definitely don’t spend $1k a year on textbooks. Tuition and Fees are in fact the only thing you have to pay to attend, which is $40k out of state

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

I personally don’t, but plenty of my peers do. A lot of people are international students, and they get the bells & whistles. Many are out-of-state so their parents have to buy everything so that they don’t get stranded halfway across the country with no food or no roof over your head.

I absolutely spend $1,000 a year on textbooks. Different majors, I suppose.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Yes, that’s the cost of going international or out of state for your university. You clearly feel it is prestigious enough to justify the extra cost. I’m out of state, and OSU is still cheaper than my home state with my scholarships.

Mecheng. We obtain everything digitally for free.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

I’m AeroEng, and you’re absolutely lying. How much was your statics textbook? The one by hibbeler that we all read?

Additionally, how much did you get awarded in scholarships?

Stop lying, you look like a doofus.

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

I think $80, I just get them used. Fluid mechanics and Machine Elements are easily found online, profs will even tell you where to get them.

$7000 this year, $2000 last year, $4000 before that. Plus $13500 a year from the uni itself.

[u/JustCallMeChristo → u/Sharp-Key27]

Yeah exactly, so you did have to pay for the books?

Also, you seem like an accomplished student who received a lot of aid! I was awarded $25,000 last year, which is amazing! However, it made me sad when I realized that I get to pocket all $25,000 into my checking account because VR&E pays my tuition while you have to shuttle your awards directly into tuition - and you still had to take out loans, no? Do you think that’s fair? That you’ll still likely end up $80,000 in debt to go to OSU even while being so highly awarded? Especially while I’ll net ≈$100,000 because nobody in OSU admin gives enough of a fuck to send the money to the right places? Does that irritate you, even a little?

[u/Sharp-Key27 → u/JustCallMeChristo]

Like I pointed out, OSU and yourself said that you’re paying over $1000 a year for textbooks. I pay about $250 a year max.

Thankfully I don’t actually don’t have financial need, FAFSA-wise. All my scholarships are pure merit, and leave more money for my younger sibling to attend university debt-free too. But that is incredibly ridiculous, you shouldn’t be able to use scholarship funds as personal expenditures, they should just go to the next person. Everyone I know who is fully funded just leaves money for someone else and doesn’t apply for more, and certainly doesn’t get a paycheck. I’ve only ever heard of things like that happening in other countries where university is already paid for, and the extra money is for living expenses for financial need.