Central State University supporters fear that a compromise plan to rescue the school could end up killing it instead.

Even some of the school's trustees believe the legislative plan - scheduled for a final decision by the end of June - is designed to cause Central State to cave in on itself, saving Ohio's legislators and other state officials the political fallout from a direct decision to shut down the state's only historically Black, public university.

Dr. George Ayers, the consultant heading up a temporary management team, said the legislative plan's restrictions, coupled with a new round of budget cuts that threaten additional layoffs at the school, are "putting a rope around the neck of the institution."

Central State (CSU) has been fighting for its political and financial life for several months, after a ballooning debt prompted efforts by some Republican members of the Ohio General Assembly to remove all state funding for the school. Some legislators had floated the prospect of merging CSU with another university, such as the private Wilberforce University - which gave birth to, and sits across the street from, Central State - or the much larger Ohio State University. But the merger talk has faded, and members of the Ohio legislature now have devised a very different plan that they say could restore CSU's health, but which has the possibility of closing the school altogether.

Legislators have amended the state's budget bill to include $28 million in funding to keep the school open for the next two years. But they have also attached more than two dozen restrictions and conditions to that funding, requiring Central State to reduce its academic programs, faculty, and athletics, and to pay off an accumulated debt, estimated to be at least $8.6 million, within its existing budget. The school would have to mothball its powerful football program - which was already under sanction by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) - and raise its private fund-raising totals and admissions standards while reducing student attrition and loan-default rates. It also would be prohibited from using state funds to provide grants or scholarships to out-of-state students.