The question of free tuition waivers for Native students at the University of Wyoming (UW) has gone back and forth between tribal members, state legislators and university representatives for a handful of years.
Many advocates point to UW’s status as a land-grant university as one reason why the school should provide support to Indigenous students, arguing that the university has benefited and continues to benefit from land taken from tribal nations by the federal government.
UW agreed to take the lead on figuring out what the waivers could look like at a board of trustees meeting last fall. At a recent Select Committee on Tribal Relations interim legislative meeting in Fort Washakie this May, the conversation took another step forward, but the proposed plan wasn’t met with unanimous support.
UW Foundation President John Stark said that the university currently has 17 endowments that support Native students in different ways and outlined what’s taken place since that fall board meeting.
“ [Alex] Kean and I were assigned the task to work with four other representatives from the two tribes to come up with a plan or perhaps a solution as to how we would respond to that request for tuition waivers,” he said. “We've met up here in Riverton in February, and then we also met recently in Laramie to figure out what are the possible ways we could handle this?”
Alex Kean is UW’s Vice President for Budget and Finance and the Chief Financial Officer. He told lawmakers that the current proposed plan is what’s called a commitment structure: a four-year renewable scholarship that would work with other scholarships to equal tuition and mandatory fees.
“ There would also be a transfer student option where transfer students would be fully eligible for three years or until a first bachelor's degree is earned,” he added.
Kean outlined the qualifications for the proposed structure: be an enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho or Eastern Shoshone tribe, graduate from a Wyoming high school, complete the FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] on an annual basis and be enrolled as a full-time student or complete a minimum of 12 credit hours per semester.
Figuring out exactly how to cover the costs is still a work in progress. Kean said the tentative plan is that the university would contribute funds to a new endowment structure.
“ Endowments are sort of a longer-term goal, and so there would need to be some expendable cash upfront,” he said. “But it would create the opportunity for funding to come from many sources to go into this endowment to then cover that cost over the long term.”
Another in-the-works draft of the proposal will go in front of the UW Board of Trustees at a future meeting later this year, which Kean said he sees as “a positive sign.”
But some tribal representatives brought up concerns about the process and the potential outcome.
Harmony Spoonhunter is the Eastern Shoshone Education Director. She expressed frustration with the timeline and said it feels like “we’re getting pushed in circles.”
“ I started in 2011 and we've been working on this for a really long time,” she said. “We had high hopes after that [board of trustees] meeting and then to come back and say, ‘Okay, you need to come back with a more definite plan’.”
Eastern Shoshone Business Council Vice Chairman Stanford Ware said he believed students from both tribes should receive tuition and fee waivers at UW. He pointed to the “culture shock” of going from the reservation to a big university farther away from home, where students might be able to live at home or have more support with things like transportation.
“ [The students] don't have the backing, as at CWC [Central Wyoming College], where they have family here to help them get through school,” he said.
Ware said he isn’t totally sold on all the requirements for the proposed commitment structure.
“ I think free tuition would be great without all the, I don't wanna say stipulations, but just to get admitted to the college should be good enough,” he said.
Northern Arapaho Business Council Chairman Keenan Groesbeck emphasized that UW is a land-grant university and the university needs to “give us the time to hear us out” on matters like student enrollment numbers and recognizing tribal sovereignty.
He said he’s worried that the university wants to toss the issue back to legislators.
“ I don't think it needs to go there,” he said. “I think the tribes and UW are in a position now that we should be able to figure this out.”
The Select Committee on Tribal Relations will meet for their second and final interim meeting at the end of October. The location and agenda for that meeting has not yet been released.
