By Faith Fistler / Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

During his freshman year at Kent State University, Nick Ditz found himself standing alone during an icebreaker activity in a classroom full of students. 

“One of the student teachers came to talk to me and it ended up going into a political discussion,” Ditz said.

A senior digital production major, Ditz self-identifies as a modern-age conservative on a liberal-leaning campus. With most in-class political discussions being dominated by liberal viewpoints, Ditz feels like he often must filter his opinions.

Students who identify as Republicans were “the most reluctant to discuss controversial topics of race, gender and sexual orientation” on campus, according to a 2022 report by the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve viewpoint diversity in higher education. Most of these students cite fear of social retaliation from their peers. The organization surveyed 1,564 full-time college students across the country. Overall, the percentage of students who reported a reluctance to discuss at least one of five controversial topics (politics, religion, sexual orientation, race, gender) is still high at 58.8% but lower than the 60% of respondents who answered last year’s survey.

Kristen Shahverdian, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America, works with universities on how to value free speech and inclusion. 

Shahverdian said that a student’s hesitation to speak up in class could be attributed to several reasons. 

“That could come from the perception that's out there, that's kind of feeding the story. In which case it creates a culture where people are thinking that whether or not it is in fact true,” Shahverdian said. “We've definitely heard, you know, it reported that some students fear that retaliation from each other, kind of through social media channels.”

Shahverdian said that the issue is an area of concern for universities because it means that diverse viewpoints aren’t being heard. 

“Higher education is working to build systems, to build people who are going to report and be a part of our democracy, who are going to be future, you know, thinking leaders and intellectual guides as we go forward,” she said. “And we want to have a diverse set of people who are grappling with understanding and really kind of contending across campus. That's how we build a diverse society.”

During the conversation with the student teacher, Ditz said he felt like he had to tread carefully as he explained his political views, but “she was very open to listening to me and wasn’t telling me I was a bad person for anything I said.”

But Ditz has not had that same reception from his peers. 

“It's [Kent State] fairly open minded,” Ditz said. “But, if you do want to talk about something conservatively, then you're more likely to get a backlash to that.”

Ditz said that this backlash usually comes in the form of jokes from peers his age. 

“I’ve had people kind of joke at me,” he said. “But with these people it’s hard to see where they were crossing a line or not. They would try and push, like I’ve been called a Hitler supporter which is by all means over the line.”

Ditz is a strong believer in freedom of speech and feels if the opinion isn’t hurtful then open discussions should be allowed to take place. As for how Kent State handles different political expressions, Ditz said the university does a good job at keeping the peace. 

“Like if they know a rally is coming up for something that's either left wing or right wing, there's kind of like an air about it like, ‘Hey, all right, here's this going on, but be aware we'll step in if you know you get violent or you get rowdy.’”

David Carey, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, argues discussions have little value if everyone agrees or is afraid to share their views on controversial subject matter. 

“As a general matter, if one student holds a viewpoint on any subject matter that offends another student, then the appropriate approach is to discuss that viewpoint and to refrain on both sides—on any side—from ad hominem attacks or personal attacks,” Carey said. 

However, Carey said that the responsibility of fostering a welcoming environment is on the university faculty and not on the students, who have every right to disagree with course material and classroom discussions. 

“As a general rule, faculty members should always keep in mind the need to not suppress student views, based merely on there being a good faith dissenting viewpoint,” he said. “And it's the responsibility of the individual faculty member to balance all of those interests.”

Shahverdian said that universities could make the transition easier for college students when they introduce these concepts during the first year of school. These concepts include freedom of speech and academic freedom, active listening and what it means to offer a constructive viewpoint. 

As for resources available to faculty and students, PEN America offers guidance on how to handle tense moments on campus. Shahverdian also suggests that universities enlist the expertise of their own professors to teach academic freedom, free speech and inclusion. 

“I would also emphasize that students change every four years,” she said. “This is not the kind of thing that can be a one-hour workshop and then forgotten about, but it needs to be baked in across the fabric of the university, consistently and proactively so that everyone feels they understand the policies and also how to be, like I said, a good college student and how to be an active, thoughtful participant in conversation and discourse across campus.”

While Ditz commends Kent State’s approach to mitigating student conflicts, he does think there is room for improvement for the school to communicate what resources are available to them if they are having issues within the classroom. 

“It just kind of falls onto the student to make sure that they're using those resources,” Ditz said. “So maybe better advertisement of, you know, how Kent State is willing to step up and actually help students because, honestly, sometimes things are available for us, but a lot of students just like don't know what's available to us.”


This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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A new report shows Black girls are enduring disproportionate discipline, sexual harassment and public humiliation from school-based police and security guards in Miami-Dade public schools.

The report, "Keep Her Safe: Centering Black Girls in School Safety," compiles the experiences of Black girls and young women between the ages of 14 and 24, sharing their stories through surveys and focus groups about mistreatment by school safety personnel who make them feel unsafe.

Bayliss Fiddiman, director of educational equity at the National Women's Law Center, which produced the study along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the girls were being treated differently for their appearance, often unaware of the lines of sexual harassment.

"The girls express school security guards making inappropriate comments about their appearance that could range from. 'Oh, she looks ghetto,' or 'she's too big to wear that outfit. I would never let my daughter wear that,'" Fiddiman explained.

The report urged the school system to use proven behavioral interventions in such cases, rather than using policing, surveillance and harsh student punishment. Miami-Dade schools has not responded to a request for comment on the study.

Fiddiman pointed out in listening sessions, the girls also did not have a clear understanding of whom to tell if they felt violated. She argued it is an opportunity for school leaders to step in and explain school safety procedures by engaging students in the conversation.

"Schools can definitely implement policies around explaining what sexual harassment is, what boundaries are, what is safe and healthy," Fiddiman recommended. "That was missing."

The report underscored incidents of security using excessive force, such as a 16-year-old Black girl being slammed to the ground, rendering her unconscious and subsequently handcuffed to prevent a fight in 2021. In 2023, a Miami-Dade security guard faced allegations of attempting to seduce three teenage girls.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in response to the 2018 Parkland shooting aimed to bolster school safety. However, it also led to heightened law enforcement presence in schools and increased surveillance measures.


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Advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have joined the Montana Quality Education Association in a suit to stop a school voucher bill in the state.

Montana is the latest to enact a plan allowing parents to pay private school tuition with public money. Senate Bill 393 is much more narrowly focused than Educational Savings Accounts in other states. In Montana, the money is limited to reimbursing services for special-education students and those with disabilities.

Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, executive director of Helena-based Upper 7 Law which is overseeing the suit, said Montana's version of Educational Savings Accounts requires special-ed students to renounce their right to a free, quality education under the state constitution and forgo federal assistance.

"In exchange for renouncing that, they can gain access to anywhere between $5,000 and $8,000 annually," Sommers-Flanagan explained. "Which, as we all know, is not enough money to educate a child for a year under any circumstances, let alone a student who may have special needs and may have particularity expensive special needs depending on the circumstances."

School voucher measures are growing across the nation, 29 states now having some form of them. The suit to block the Montana bill was filed in state court in Helena.

In addition to the critics' standard argument which holds funding Educational Savings Accounts with state education money comes at the expense of public K-12 classrooms, Sommers-Flanagan added the accounts will not make enough money available to adequately fund special-needs students anyway.

"It's a lose-lose situation," Sommers-Flanagan contended. "It's incredibly harmful. It appears just to be a gambit to try to privatize public money and to send it to vendors and to folks who have no accountability and no responsibility to genuinely meet the needs of kids who have disabilities in Montana."

Supporters have said they can do a better job educating their own kids than the state can because they understand the students' strengths and weaknesses.

New Mexico is taking a deep dive into its funding of public colleges and universities to determine if inequities need to be addressed. The Higher Education Sustainability Study will review and recommend changes to the formula used to fund higher ed.

Gerald Hoehne, director, Capital Outlay Division with the New Mexico Higher Education Department, said it will look at possible inequities among the full range of sectors - from colleges and universities to research institutions, independent community colleges and branch campuses.

"The differences between community colleges and research institutions - those differences have come into how they're funded. So, this study gives us an opportunity to look at that in more detail," he said.

Community colleges disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color, but New Mexico is among the majority of states where two-year institutions receive thousands of dollars less in education revenue per student enrolled than four-year institutions, according to a 2020 study by the Center for American Progress.

Hoehne expected study results to be available by mid-October ahead of the 2025 legislative session, so lawmakers have insight and can make changes they feel are needed. The Legislature earmarked $187 million for higher education in 2024 - more than double last year's investment and one of the largest investments in higher education in state history. Hoene said an initiative within the study will look at how New Mexico's funding compares to other states.

"To understand if there is different ways in which other states are addressing the different types of institutions and how we potentially may be able to incorporate any changes to our process to address those differences," he continued.

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems is conducting the equity study on behalf of the state.