Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
TULSA, Okla. — Bacone College’s board of trustees filed for bankruptcy last week after their attorney told them it was the only chance to keep the Muskogee campus off the market.
The Utah-based company, MHEC, has been attempting to sue Bacone for two years over uncompensated HVAC work done on the campus. MHEC has tried to put the campus on auction twice in the past two years. Each time, the sheriff’s sale was canceled less than 24 hours before the auction. Former Interim President Nicky Michael said she never knew why the sale kept getting canceled.
Current Interim President Leslie Hannah revealed in an ICT and Tulsa World interview that the sale was canceled because MHEC kept finding other creditors that Bacone owed money to, so they would withdraw the land sale, and add the other creditors to their lawsuit. The last land sale in December was canceled 40 minutes before it began, as more creditors popped up claiming to be in line before MHEC.
“MHEC is not just wanting their piece of the pie. They’re wanting the whole pie, so other people who had a claim on Bacone, MHEC just added them to the suit. They even added a John Doe space, just in case somebody else popped up,” Hannah said.
He said their decision to enter into bankruptcy is an attempt to save the campus and college.
“We’ve been advised by multiple attorneys that if MHEC has tried a land sale twice, bankruptcy would take precedence over that, and they could not make us go to land sale again,” Hannah said. “If we lose the campus, we lose the whole college.”
Their bankruptcy judge asked for a reorganization plan before July 5, which the board of trustees submitted at the same time they filed for bankruptcy. The plan consisted of disclosing debts owed to utility and insurance companies, lenders, the IRS, attorneys, and their plan to compensate each entity.
“Our bankruptcy attorney said the judge was pleased,” said Hannah. “We might have to tweak a few things, but it’s a sound plan. He approved of it.”
Bacone is suspending academic operations for one year. Hannah hopes they will have a soft opening next fall semester, accepting a couple dozen students, and perhaps starting with online courses.
“As many problems as Bacone has, one of the problems they have is healthy housing and healthy buildings. Some of those buildings are infested with mold. I don’t want to house any students in substandard housing,” Hannah said.
The board doesn’t know where they will get funding for the renovations at this time, but Hannah said the renovations are “on the side burner until we get as many of these debtors off our back as we can.”
ICT and Tulsa World attempted to contact MHEC but were unsuccessful.
The Ataloa museum on campus had been broken into earlier this year, with Native art pieces stolen. Hannah said that many art pieces were also destroyed because the school’s former Interim President Ferlin Clark did not store them safely.
“For reasons that are still a mystery to this day, he removed a good deal of that art from where it was housed and literally threw it in the basement of the library,” Hannah said. “That basement floods on a cloudy day. If there’s dew on the grass outside, there is water in the basement. Some of those works were in standing water and moldy conditions.”
About a year ago, Hannah began removing the art pieces from Bacone campus and bringing them to his building in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In addition to his presidency at Bacone, Hannah is also the director of education for the United Keetoowah Band (UKB) of Cherokee Indians. The UKB education program received a fellowship to bring in an artifact expert to help find missing artifacts from the Ataloa museum. The expert has been working with Hannah for over a year to move the items to safe, secure conditions.
This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.
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