Zach Perrier
Viewpoints Editor
Last Wednesday, Nov. 13, the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 104. This is a law which in part requires transgender students in K-12 schools and private and public higher education institutions to use the restroom of their assigned sex at birth rather than the bathroom of their gender identity. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is expected to sign the bill into law.
SB 104 was introduced in 2023 and largely centers around new guidelines for the College Credit Plus program. The program, created by the Ohio Department of Education, allows for high school students to take classes which count as both high school credits and transferable college credits. SB 104 was amended in June by Republican lawmakers to include the new stipulations on bathrooms.
Before the bill was amended, many organizations testified as proponents of the bill to the Ohio Senate, such as the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio, which includes The College of Wooster.
The provisions on transgender students’ bathroom use covers K-12 schools throughout the state, as well as state institutions like the Ohio State University and private colleges such as Wooster. On top of barring transgender students from using bathrooms of their gender identity, the section of the bill on bathroom use states that schools and higher education institutions also cannot construct non-gendered “multi-occupancy facilities,” or bathrooms that are not single occupancy. However, the bill states that “family facilities” and single occupancy restrooms are not prohibited.
State Senator Andrew Brenner, one of the bill’s sponsors, stated in a press release that “House Bill 183 addressed the concern from many Ohio parents about their local schools allowing the opposite sex into shared restrooms or locker rooms … I support protecting women, and our daughters, by simply providing the specific facilities reserved for them.”
Jake Marion, director of sexuality and gender inclusion (SGI), stated that “ongoing conversation” on the adjustments the College needs to make to comply with the legislation if signed is happening “at multiple levels, from CDI to Cabinet.” Marion said that SGI is “actively working together and with expert counsel to find a path that will best support our students and employees while complying with the law when it takes effect.”
Marion also stated that the campus “will need to abide by the guidelines it presents,” and expressed concerns over the bill’s implications for transgender and gender non-conforming people on campus.
