Ohio State trustees refuse to confirm whether university still pushes DEI after release of viral video

A group that says it exposed an Ohio State University official telling an undercover conservative journalist that the school was still promoting left-wing beliefs to its students now says members of the Board of Trustees have refused to respond.

Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette said he approached multiple Ohio State University trustees who were heading to their meeting, but none wanted to talk to him about the university’s apparent push for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, despite bans at both the federal and state levels. The trustees also refused to comment on a DOJ investigation that AIM said started shortly after it released its video.

“The unaccountable radicals at Ohio State think the law doesn’t apply to them, and the trustees who are charged with oversight of this institution don’t seem capable or interested in bringing about reform,” Guillette told Ohio.News. “Thank goodness for the Department of Justice.”

With the passage of Senate Bill 1 in 2025, Ohio became one of the states that banned DEI offices on public college and university campuses, prohibiting institutions of higher learning from issuing pro-DEI statements or promoting DEI in any other way.

In May, AIM released a video that it says shows an Ohio State administrator admitting to an undercover journalist that the university defies state and federal laws by failing to eliminate its DEI practices.

“Because of the law, we had to change signs and centers,” Melissa Newhouse, Executive Administrative Assistant for the Office of the Dean at the Ohio State, said in the Accuracy in Media video.

Newhouse also told the undercover journalist that white people are privileged.

“The ‘whites’ are there too, not just the underrepresented. They brought the people with the privilege there, too,” she said.

In the latest AIM video, Guillette said that the university asked the organization to provide raw footage of the original video. Guillette said that the organization would have been happy to provide it, as long as the university’s president or provost met with Accuracy in Media for a brief interview.

Despite offering the university officials the choice of the best place, date, and time for the interview, AIM said the university began ignoring the media organization until it finally responded by asking for the raw footage again so it could be sent to the DOJ. AIM said that it already sent the video to the investigators.

While asking the trustees regarding the recent scandal, Guillette and his team brought a mobile billboard to Ohio State’s board of trustees to show them the unedited footage.

After approaching the trustees, university officials called the police in hopes of having them remove Guillette, his team, and the mobile billboards from campus. However, the officer who arrived only asked Guillette to park the car with the billboard in a parking spot, which Guillette and his team did.

Separately, Ohio State was also previously caught discriminating against white people and requiring its students to take Marxist courses.