The opportunity to explore has been taken away from students. A new house bill has been set to not allow students to read books with sexual content. This bill was signed by Governor Mike DeWine on Jan. 8, 2025, and was put into effect Apr. 9, 2025. 

In the state of Ohio it is now a mandatory action for teachers to inform parents when their child wishes to read a book with sexual content. Within this bill sexual content contains: hand holding, hugging, kissing and attraction to one another. The action gives parents the ability to manage what content their child will consume.  

Olentangy high schoolers do not agree with this house bill. They believe if they already understand the concepts of relationships then it is fine if books contain information about the topic. Moreover, students feel they are limited to the books they can read. Students being limited to books does not help their reading levels increase and does not challenge the reader.

“I think its intention to notify parents is justified. But, in practice it’s not feasible,”  Erin Williams, English teacher, said. “Legislators who don’t have experience in the classroom do not understand how muddy this is. Legislators gave no realistic guidelines on how to implement this practice.”

An example which would fit with this concept is a classroom library. Most English teachers have classroom libraries which are open to the students. These books are usually read in free time, for curriculum or individual reading. A good population of books high school teachers have included some form of sexual content, so it makes it difficult to take out books which contain the content. 

Legislators think teachers can take out a few books in a classroom and still have plenty, but it is not as easy as they think it is. Teachers have to read through all of those books and know which ones contain the content. This could take teachers years or months to get done, so it is just easier to take the whole library out. Legislators need to consider how this bill makes teachers’ lives more difficult.

“I agree and disagree because hugging is not a big deal, but I think for kissing and sexual it depends on how deep the book explains it,” Madeline Lorenz ‘28 said.

Furthermore, signs of affection are something friends also do, not just couples. So it is not meant as a way to be sexual with someone. In addition, Lorenz also explains how deep the content is. This is a good perspective because it is reasonable. Books which go into descriptive sexual context should not be allowed, but books allowing characters to hug and kiss are perfectly fine.

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