A congressional investigation of reports that Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence has disregarded sexual assaults of students is underway, according to a July letter from lawmakers.
Haskell, a four-year institution serving about 140 tribal nations and Alaska Native communities, has been enveloped by turmoil for more than a decade and has gained a reputation for mismanagement and instability. The university is the only one of its kind in the United States for Indigenous people that is fully funded and run by the federal government.
The university was the subject of congressional committee hearings Tuesday following a July 2 letter to the director of the Bureau of Indian Education. saying committee members are investigating reports that school and federal officials failed to act quickly to address studentsâ concerns about sexual assault and misconduct.
The letter, from several House committee chairs in Congress, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Natural Resources, named the university, the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which operates Haskell, as objects of the inquiry.
The letter also says the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), which oversees all schools for Native American children, kept the findings of their own report secret and omitted information from the report they made to address sexual assault concerns.
Allegations of misconduct at the university, the letter said, were reported to officials at the school, the BIE and Department of Interior through numerous emails and letters filed by both current and former students and employees.
Haskell officials did not respond this week to a request for comment on this story.
Haskell coach fired, reinstated
In January 2022, Haskell cross-country coach Clay Mayes heard that a student had been sexually assaulted by an employee of the athletic department, according to a letter he later wrote to a BIE official.
Mayes immediately reported the assault to his supervisor, he wrote, and he was fired three months later.
The reasons given for his firing have since been deemed fraudulent by the Department of Interior, BIE, and Office of Inspector General, according to the letter.
In his letter, Mayes had asked for the FBI and U.S. Attorneyâs office to investigate.
On July 11, 2022 â about six months after Mayes reported the sexual assault and three months after he was fired â BIE investigators arrived at Haskell, according Mayesâ letter.
Both investigators and the Haskell Board of Regents president Brittany Hall asked for Mayesâ help in the investigation, which had stalled. Multiple students were afraid to come forward due to the schoolâs previous failures to react to reports of sexual assault seriously, Mayes wrote.
Mayes was able to facilitate interviews, he wrote, under the studentsâ condition that the reportâs findings would be made public, which has not happened.
Congress is now seeking the 528-page report from that investigation.
Mayes was recently reinstated at Haskell, and for that reason said he was not able to comment on the investigation.
Congress seeks investigative report
Haskellâs recent investigation, according to the congressional letter, looked into allegations of harassment, bullying, nepotism, theft, sexual assault, fraud, drinking and other problems on campus.
The congressional committees â who held hearings on Tuesday â said they were âtroubledâ that the BIE allegedly refused to release the report on multiple occasions, and even submitted an entirely different report when a Freedom of Information Act request was filed.
The report was only released after the school was legally forced to do so, the congressional letter said.
âThe now publicly available but heavily redacted (report) describes serious assertions and findings of misconduct at HINU that ravaged HINU student and faculty welfare,â the letter said. âDisturbingly, several cases of sexual assault were reportedly disregarded.â
Haskell reportedly missed a July 10 deadline to submit an unredacted copy of the report submitted Nov. 7, 2022 and for all edits, amendments, deletions, additions or other modifications explained between then and Jan. 12.
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