DEAR EDITOR:

So, how do we go about dumbing down America more than it is already?

Well, for openers, how about eliminating the Department of Education and truncating appropriate funding for public schools. These are but two ways of compromising learning for our children. Want to know more about the other insidious machinations being perpetrated on our citizenry?

One need only peruse that destructive document, Project 2025, published by the Heritage Foundation, and its mutant document, Ohio SB-1. Both divisive documents are clearly treacherous attempts to clamp down on student learning, K-12 and at the college / university levels. This latter document, SB-1, foisted upon higher education by OH Republican Sen. Jerry Cirino et al., is currently being implemented at YSU by its fraudulently appointed president pro-tem, Bill Johnson.

To that end, soon newly pronounced faculty policy rules / standards will severely limit, if not completely curtail any collaborative input and decision-making on their part. In addition, this document prohibits faculty strikes, thereby making the college administration and its governor-appointed board of “trustees” the sole power brokers.

In short, intellectual freedom of classroom participants, instructors and students alike, has been severely limited with absolutely no democratic recourse for airing grievances. Decision-making will be determined by prejudicial Ohio lawmakers and not by on-site academic players with vested interests in broad and well-informed academic freedoms.

The dumbing-down and control of all aspects of YSU’s “higher education” has been thwarted by the outrageous assault on intellectual freedom now occurring throughout our country. And no matter the deceptive spin being voiced by Johnson’s disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary, anti-intellectualism is alive and well on Y-Town’s university campus.

So, to any prospective student contemplating enrollment at YSU, make inquiry as to why faculty must now watch their backs should they ever veer off institutional protocol by voicing personal opinions. This is what it has come to in the good old U.S. of A, freedom of speech being limited by constricting political conservatism.

Be very careful, citizens of Mahoning Valley, Big Brother is very alert and watching your every action and word, especially on campus. George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984,” is alive and well in America.

TERRY CROGAN

Boardman