Kevin Abourezk
ICT
LAWRENCE, Kansas – As snow fell outside her dorm room, De’Ara Dosela awoke, looked at her phone and learned her world had changed.
An email from her university’s president began: “I’m writing to inform you of recent staffing changes that will affect our campus.”
The White Mountain Apache student would later learn nearly a quarter of Haskell Indian Nations University’s faculty and staff had lost their jobs that Friday, February 14, as part of the Trump administration’s decision to fire all federal probationary employees in order to cut government spending.
The layoffs hit Haskell students hard.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I just kind of laid in my room all day. I didn’t know how to feel.”
It would take several days for her and other students to begin to realize the scope of the layoffs, and even then it was through social media, rather than university leaders, that they began to learn which of their teachers, coaches and favorite dining hall workers had been fired. In the hours after the layoffs, employees announced on Facebook and Instagram that they had lost their jobs.
Many lamented no longer being able to work with students. Among them was Julia White Bull, Dosela’s boss and “campus aunt.”
As a university academic advisor or “success coach,” White Bull had helped students enroll in classes, find financial aid, meet graduation requirements and navigate the many challenges of student life.
“It just hasn’t been the same without her,” Dosela said.
Picking up the pieces
Nearly a month after the university’s layoffs, students, employees and alumni have worked to repair the damage.
The layoffs impacted Haskell and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institution in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the only two federally operated tribal colleges and universities in the country out of the 34 active tribal colleges.
The layoff notices went to probationary federal workers who had been hired within the one to two years. They were not covered under the civil service regulations that protected other federal employees. Although, one individual at SIPI who was laid off was one month shy of her three-year anniversary. Bureau of Indian Education employees hired for “Indian preference” positions, which include many positions at Haskell, are required to serve for two years on probationary status.
At Haskell, nearly 40 employees, including seven instructors, multiple coaches, administrative, housing and custodial workers, and others were abruptly laid off. The layoffs left Haskell with 34 classes without teachers and half of its academic advisors jobless, forcing instructors to take on more courses, as well as all academic advising duties, according to a letter sent by Haskell University President Frank Arpan to students and employees.
With just a few custodians, students say they have had to empty overflowing trashcans, refill empty toilet paper dispensers and clean bathrooms themselves.
The layoffs have also underscored institutional challenges at Haskell, where university administrators have long struggled to relay timely information to students and employees.
ICT reached out to Haskell University President Frank Arpan recently for an interview regarding the layoffs and their impact on the university. Arpan declined to comment and directed ICT to a Bureau of Indian Education spokesperson, who offered a terse reply:
“The Bureau reaffirms its unwavering commitment to strengthening government-to-government relationships with American Indian and Alaska Native tribes while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people. We do not have a comment on personnel matters; however, the Interior will continue to uphold federal responsibilities to tribal communities.”
The Bureau of Indian Education, under the U.S. Department of the Interior, operates Haskell as part of the U.S. government’s trust responsibilities — the legal and moral obligations the U.S. has to protect and uphold treaties, laws and congressional acts dealing with tribes.
At Haskell, Arpan has communicated with students and employees through sporadic, emailed letters. In the days following the layoffs, he shared many of the tough decisions he was forced to make, but he promised better days.
And better days may be coming.
Last week, he said all faculty members who were terminated would be returning to their positions immediately as contracted adjunct instructors. And in a March 12 letter, Arpan said all faculty rehired as contract employees had been fully reinstated and that the university planned to hire more student workers to help with custodial needs.
Furthermore, he said, all “coaches, dining, and housing personnel lost in the probationary terminations” had been rehired, including the university’s women’s basketball coach, Adam Strom, who had continued coaching despite not getting paid.
“It’s really exciting,” Strom told ICT last week a few hours after learning he had been rehired.
But not all of the news has been good.
Arpan said academic advisors within the university’s Student Success Center would not be rehired “due to personnel adjustments caused by the recent layoffs.” He said the center would remain closed.
Haskell Foundation President Bo Schneider said the foundation is working with Arpan’s office to identify the university’s most urgent needs and has begun raising funds to meet those needs. With a goal of $350,000, the foundation had raised more than $247,000 as of Monday, March 17.
Schneider – who spoke to ICT prior to Arpan’s announcement on March 12 that all faculty, coaches, dining hall and housing staff, had been reinstated – said the foundation planned to use the funds to rehire essential employees, support laid-off employees and meet urgent student needs.
While the foundation and university administrators have worked to minimize the impact of the cuts, outside forces have stepped forward to try to reverse the layoffs.
Those efforts have included:
- A March 7 federal lawsuit filed by the Native American Rights Fund on behalf of three tribes and five Native American students who say the Trump administration failed its trust obligations to tribes by laying off Bureau of Indian Education employees, including those at Haskell and at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, the only other federally run tribal college and university.
- A March 12 decision by a federal judge in California ordering the Trump administration to rehire thousands of workers let go in the mass layoffs. U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the firings didn’t follow federal law and aimed his decision at several federal departments, including Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Treasury and the Interior.
However, it was unclear this week whether and how the judge’s ruling would impact BIE employees. What is clear is the Trump administration’s plans to fight the ruling, which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week called “absurd and unconstitutional.”
Silence after a job loss
Julia White Bull, a success coach who lost her job, said she has received no information from the university regarding potential efforts to rehire her.
“I have heard nothing. Silence,” she said.
The granddaughter of the late, famed American Indian Movement leader Russell Means said she considers her firing illegal, considering the federal government’s trust obligations to provide education to Indigenous people.
White Bull, a Standing Rock Sioux Tribe citizen, said she has written to her congressional representatives and state senators seeking support to force the Trump administration to rescind the layoffs. She also has sought the support of tribal leaders to provide funding to offset the university’s job and funding losses.
And she has marched in protests alongside many of the students whom she spent so many years empowering to speak for themselves.
“I did everything right. I got my bachelor’s, got my master’s, worked my way on up,” she said. “This is why we need people to fight because this could happen to anyone.”
She also took aim at the way the university handled her layoff.
Given little time to leave, she cried openly after leaving her office and carrying her belongings through the library, where students had gathered that day to talk and share their grief. Many walked up to White Bull with tears in their eyes as they said goodbye.
“I just didn’t expect it to be that way, kind of humiliating,” she said. “Even while I was turning in my electronics, I couldn’t stop crying.”
The single mother of two and 2010 Haskell alumnus said last week she hasn’t yet found a job and was struggling to find ways to replace the salary and benefits she lost. Like other Haskell employees, White Bull has refused to turn her back on the students she left behind and has helped some of them complete paperwork needed to graduate.
In turn, her students thanked her and other laid-off employees at a Sunday, March 2, event hosted by the off-campus Haskell Catholic Student Center. Inside the university’s library, organizers served seven former employees fried chicken, quiches, salads, fruit and, of course, the Native potluck staple potato salad before placing blankets on their shoulders.
White Bull’s 10-year-old daughter stood beside her crying, along with many of the students.
“I didn’t realize how much we impacted their lives,” White Bull said.
Aunties and uncles
For many students, Haskell has not only been a place for learning but a place to connect to their Indigenous roots and to other Native students from more than 150 tribes across the country.
Allison Levering, Winnebago, is continuing a family tradition started by her grandmother and carried on by her mother, a former Miss Haskell.
“Haskell is different because here it’s an intertribal, international melting pot for tribes across the United States and Canada,” said the junior media communications and journalism student.
She said many, if not most, instructors intertwine Native culture and history into their courses and get to know their students so well that many, in turn, call them “auntie” or “uncle,” honorifics common in many Native cultures.
Another Winnebago student attending Haskell, Marina DeCora, said attending Haskell has helped her reconnect to her Native identity, a connection nearly severed at the age of 7 when her parents divorced and she was forced to remain with her non-Native mother.
“I always knew there was a home for me somewhere,” she said. “I probably would have just stayed lost.”
The Indigenous studies student said she knew she wanted to attend Haskell after visiting campus and seeing many other students playing the same music she enjoyed.
“I come to campus and everyone has the same kind of playlist,” she said, laughing. “I find that really interesting.”
On a chilly winter morning, Burt Miner, 20, walked to class past a stone archway in front of the school’s athletic field. The Ponca, Otoe, Comanche and Cherokee student said he grew up around few other Native people and at Haskell has learned much about what it means to be Indigenous.
“Seeing all the different tribes, different people from around the U.S., I think it’s so cool just to hear about different cultures.”
The fight for truth
The day of the layoffs, Valentine’s Day, began with heavy snow and below-zero temperatures that led to canceled classes at Haskell. Students spent the day in their dorms or at the library studying and visiting with other students.
The Haskell campus is located in the southeast corner of a city of about 96,000 that is also home to the state’s flagship university, the University of Kansas, where many Haskell students continue their studies after graduating. Other Haskell students, like Allison Levering, work at KU.
Not only does Levering lead the Haskell student newspaper, The Indian Leader, she also serves as the lead anchor for “Good Morning Indian Country,” a weekly Native news program hosted at KU and produced collaboratively by KU and Haskell students.
She said she learned Haskell had lost many of its faculty and staff to the federal layoffs while at the Haskell library – where baked goods for sale and Valentine’s Day decorations graced shelves. Immediately, Levering got to work trying to find out key details: how many employees were laid off, how the university’s leaders planned to handle the job losses, and what impact those losses would have.
She quickly realized she faced an uphill battle.
Haskell leaders have historically faced challenges communicating with students as they must first gain the approval of their inherently cautious, politically mindful supervisors within the federal Bureau of Indian Education, Levering said.
Those institutional barriers became especially apparent Feb. 14.
“There was so little that was given to us students,” Levering said.
Forced to comb the internet for more information, she began seeing news articles talking about the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who the Trump administration had laid off. But soon, she began seeing news stories about how the layoffs would impact Haskell.
“A lot of them had the wrong idea about what was going on here,” she said.
Indian Leader staff began reaching out to university employees who had lost their jobs – including the newspaper’s own faculty advisor – but found those employees knew little more than they did.
Through student and employee interviews and, eventually, a statement from President Arpan, student reporters began to piece together the scope and impact of the layoffs.
The university had lost one-fourth of its employees, including teachers and athletic staff, including a beloved athletic trainer.
“He was a huge impact to all the student athletes, because they’d be going to him for advice and stuff and they’d be going to him to work out,” said sophomore business student and Haskell men’s basketball player Dontrelle Denetso, Navajo.
Freshman Lewis Tate, Navajo, said he lost his news writing instructor, and even though the university replaced the instructor, it hasn’t been the same.
“Everything was all laid out for us and now it’s all messed up,” he said.
The losses impacted nearly every academic department and led some to question, at least briefly, whether the university would be able to keep its doors open.
Within hours, however, students, boosters and tribal leaders began voicing their support for an institution whose alumni includes legendary athletes like Olympic gold medalist and runner Billy Mills and Jim Thorpe, the country’s first Native American Olympic gold medalist.
The Haskell Foundation began raising funds, and tribes offered support, including the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation of Kansas, which paid for custodial support.
In his March 12 letter to students and employees, President Arpan promised to work to be more transparent, promising to provide weekly updates.
“Our priority is to provide accurate updates once information and resources are finalized rather than release details that are not confirmed,” he said. “Thank you for your support. Onward Haskell!”
A silver lining
Haskell students haven’t taken the layoffs quietly.
Hoisting banners and fists on the streets of Lawrence and before the Kansas state Capitol in Topeka, many of these future Native leaders have found their voice.
Or, in the case of Tyler Moore, lost it — literally.
Like so many others, the Indigenous studies senior marched in a protest on February 28 in downtown Lawrence, where he chanted so much that he lost his voice.
“Great way to lose it to be fair,” he said, laughing.
The Cherokee Nation citizen serves as the Haskell “brave,” an honorific position much like a high school prom king. He said the layoffs led to him losing his photography and archery teachers.
“You had faculty who were already at capacity,” he said. “Now they’re just asked to do more and more and just being stretched way too thin.”
He wants to become a historian, but first he needs to graduate.
“You’re juggling classwork and this situation all at the same time,” he said.
In addition to protesting, some students have used their voice in other ways.
Just two days before the Haskell layoffs, Marina DeCora had taken on the role of a representative of the Haskell Student Government Association.
She said even before the layoffs, students were wrestling with a proposal by two Kansas congressional leaders that would transfer governance of Haskell from the federal government to the Haskell Board of Regents, an organization whose role with the university many students say they don’t understand.
And their questions to university administrators have largely gone unanswered, DeCora said. ICT sent a request for comment on March 5 to Board of Regents Interim President Dalton Henry but received no response.
And in the weeks after classes began, students began reporting concerns about not receiving their financial aid or student worker paychecks – problems that some students say have persisted, DeCora said.
“Within the first week of this semester, it was absolute chaos,” she said. “Nobody was listening to the students.”
The loss of one-quarter of the university’s employees only compounded the challenges already facing Haskell and led some students to disenroll, she said.
“Right now the whole community is suffering. I’m 36 years old, you know. These are kids. They’re kids,” she said, tearing up.
And they are being forced to grow up fast.
De’Ara Dosela, who helped organize the student protests, said it was difficult at first to leave her eastern Arizona reservation, a picturesque place of mountains, trees, rivers and lakes, but a place also plagued by poverty, violence and drug and alcohol addiction.
“It’s what made me tough, and it’s what made me ready to go out in the world,” she said.
Her new home, she said, is Haskell, and she plans to continue fighting for the relatives she has made there.
As she prepared to leave the Haskell library last week, Dosela stopped to look at a handwritten note that White Bull left on her office door as she left for the last time. The note included a message from her 10-year-old daughter.
“Bye Haskell. We’ll miss you forever.”
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