WASHINGTON – Members of two U.S. House committees investigated allegations of sexual assault, bullying and retaliation at Haskell Indian Nations University, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, during a hearing this week.
Haskell, a school in Lawrence, Kansas, that is the only four-year college operated by the FBI, has come under scrutiny for its response to a series of student allegations documented in a devastating report by the Bureau of Indian Education, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The report says the school failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse, lacked institutional control to prevent theft and other abuse, and failed to respond to student complaints. Kansas Reflector summarized in an opinion piece from April.
Students and other interested parties called on the department to publish the report. The department completed it in January 2023, but the government held it back for over a year.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request from the nonprofit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a lawsuit under the Federal Free Disclosure Act (FOIA), the office initially released an independent report in November 2023.
In April 2024, the office finally published the report requested by students and PEER – with extensive deletions.
Tuesday’s hearing was called after two U.S. House committees responsible for the issue – Education and Workforce and Natural Resources – launched an investigation At the beginning of July, “allegations of misconduct” were made against the university and the Ministry of the Interior.
The Republican committee chairs, Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Natural Resources Chairwoman Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, launched a letter to Tony Dearman, Director of the Bureau of Indian Education, expressing their concerns and requesting several documents that could assist them in their investigation.
“Haskell students have been deprived of what should be the most important guarantee of our educational system: a safe learning environment,” Rep. Burgess Owens, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, said Tuesday.
Owens’ panel conducted the hearing jointly with the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Natural Resources Committee.
The Utah Republican called the allegations in the Bureau of Indian Education report “appalling” and expressed particular concern about the apparent lack of transparency.
“Perhaps even more problematic is that the release of the report has been delayed,” he said. “There are indications that there may have been omissions and changes in the final, publicly available version.”
“With each of these new developments, the academic integrity of the institution has been seriously compromised,” he said.
Leadership problems
The university, which was founded in 1884 as a boarding school for Native American children, has recently experienced a change in leadership. eight presidents in six years.
At the hearing, Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, said this contributed to the school’s problems.
“For many years, a big challenge at Haskell has been to set clear expectations for leadership,” he said.
“The high turnover of presidents and leadership at Haskell over the years … has allowed some of the problems with these factions or cliques to fester on campus,” he added.
Republicans in the House of Representatives criticized Newland, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and other officials about allegations that they had ignored “Haskell students’ pleas for justice.”
When asked by Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California why it took multiple FOIA requests to produce the Bureau of Indian Education’s 2023 final report detailing the allegations in Haskell, Newland said Tuesday, “That report should have been made public.”
retribution
Rep. Melanie Stansbury, ranking member of the Natural Resources Subcommittee and a Democrat from New Mexico, said she sees two problems: a “toxic work culture that needs to be addressed within the school’s administration and faculty” and “a consequential accountability issue” at the Bureau of Indian Education.
Ronald Graham, President of Haskell of May 2020 to May 2021said there was “something very wrong” at both the school and the Bureau of Indian Education.
“It started long before I arrived. I exposed it, I reported it and I was fired for it. It continued after I left and all indications are that it continues to this day,” Graham said.
Clay Mayes, the school’s former cross country coach who was fired in April 2022, felt he was the victim of retaliation for accusing colleagues of theft and sexual misconduct at Haskell.
Mayes, a member of the Cherokee and Chickasaw tribes, said there is “total fear” of reporting things in Haskell because of “certain alliances.”
“Certain people find out who is protected, and new employees join with that one group because they are protected,” he said. “So the culture is: don’t report it and get along with whoever is basically getting the most out of the system.”
Reporting sexual assault on university campuses
“Indigenous students are more likely to be victims of sexual assault than any other ethnic group,” said Emily Martin, program director at the National Women’s Law Center. She also noted that more than one in four women are sexually assaulted in college.
“Students often tell us that they are discouraged from reporting sexual assault and harassment at their schools,” Martin told the joint panel. “When they do report, they tell us that there are delays, that the system is working against them, and that the trauma they experienced from the assault and from the reporting and investigation process sticks with them.”
Martin said that as a state-run educational program, Haskell is “legally obligated to protect its students from sexual discrimination, including sexual assault.”
