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Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
While the interim president of Bacone College was scrolling the news, she was surprised to find the Muskogee, Oklahoma institution is going up for auction Dec. 14.
“We should have been notified that appraisal was done. Instead we found out by reading in the newspaper that their appraisal was at $4 to $6 million,” Interim President Nicky Michael said Tuesday. “Until we read it the same as everybody else did, our attorneys never got served. We never got served. Nobody even knew that was happening.”
The sale would resolve a lawsuit filed by MHEC LLC against Bacone for over $1 million. The firm alleges the school failed to pay for extensive HVAC work done on campus — work Michael said was never supposed to happen before the institution was financially capable.
Michael is now asking for monetary support as Bacone makes another attempt to keep the college off the market by settling with MHEC, beginning their hopeful climb to financial freedom.
MHEC was hired for the work by former Bacone President Ferlin Clark amid his plan to bring the school’s finances in line.
Michael said the 2019 plan never came to fruition as the then-president rededicated his efforts to turning Bacone into a tribal college.
To become a tribal college, an institution must be approved by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). If Clark had gotten this approval, Michael said Bacone would have been looking at a possible $1 million annually for students.
“Students would actually be able to pay their bills,” she said. “But that didn’t happen. Apparently, the BIE had told him no, and we never got that notification. It didn’t trickle down to the rest of us. We’ll just put it that way.”
Michael is calling on Muskogee leaders, state authorities and the tribes of Oklahoma to help Bacone in a fundraising effort.
It is not Bacone’s future as a school on the line, Michael said, but rather the land and the building. If the land and building are lost to the auction, Bacone is left with only two options.
“Either we go online completely, or we also work with another college to make sure that we get students through the education system,” she said.
Bacone is unique for Indigenous students in that it accepts applicants without SAT or ACT scores.
“Usually, our students are the ones that are left behind and perhaps didn’t get the type of education that someone in, you know, an upper-middle-class society might. Those are the ones that are ACT-prepping all their lives for school. They’re going to good schools, and I hate to say it that way, but we’re the ones catching those (other) students.”
Because the BIE did not approve Bacone as a tribal college, it is now considered an Indigenous-serving institution. This means that all students, even tribal citizens, must apply to get a Pell grant, tribal scholarships or other financial aid.
“We have Native students, and if they’re not Native, they’re usually from the surrounding community, and let’s face it, Muskogee is not a middle-class, wealthy town. It has the same kind of troubles as any other poverty-stricken area,” Michael said.
Asking students for tuition payments, she said, is like squeezing from a dry sponge, as they already have more urgent bills and financial needs to meet on their own.
Bacone’s interim president said she is facing the institution’s colorful past head on.
“We are the only boarding school to have apologized for those actions that many people experienced in boarding school,” Michael said. “We’ve tried as hard as we can to turn around and be as positive and accepting of everybody.”
The college works to provide a sense of cultural community and connection for Indigenous students that would be hindered by moving online, Michael said, including a notable art exhibit.
“Bacone is one of the best schools I’ve been to,” concerned freshman Jordan Kerby said in a text message sent to Michael last week. “It feels more like a family than anything. If I were to lose (it), I don’t know what I’d do or where I’d go.”
Michael said she sympathizes with the Bacone students but feels good for their future.
“We are not by any stretch of imagination out of the woods, even if it weren’t for MHEC, but once we have a few more financials finished, we can move on to our audit, and then, we’ll be back in good shape with accrediting agencies,” she said.
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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