Peyton Bad Bear, Reporter
A delegation of students and administrators from Little Big Horn College visited Washington, D.C. last month for the annual American Indian Higher Education Consortium winter conference.
Dr. David Yarlott, Jr., the President of Little Big Horn College along with the Student Government officials, Marty Lopez, Lionel Shepherd, Larry Rondeaux, Carlton Roberts, and of course two students from the Wisdom of the People Leadership program who are Crystal Goes Ahead and I.
Dr. Yarlott said, “The Capital Hill visit is a great experience for LBHC Student’s. They get to see the internal workings or our government, being able to converse with our Congressional Leaders face to face. As for our purpose of securing funding for college operations and ensuring inclusion of Tribal Colleges and Universities in Federal Funds, the outcomes were not what we had hoped for. But, compared to the prospect of other organizations and groups facing greater cuts in funds then TCU’s, we did okay.”
Much of the discussion at the conference was about our Federal budget, which was released on February 14. This new budget will freeze federal funding for the next five years and will cut budgets in many federal programs, including the Department of Education and Indian education.
Tribal colleges and universities receive federal funding, they are lacking state funding. A lot of things are affected with this new budget and they include U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development and the Housing and Urban Development programs. If these programs have funding reduced or cut, it will result in the halting of construction on the LBHC campus, as well as at other tribal colleges and universities.
There are a few important Higher Ed programs in President’s budget that will be affected, including the Pell Grant, a federal grant for students with low incomes.
Pell Grants may be frozen at a maximum of $5,500 a year and this could be made permanent. When these funds are maintained at their maximum balance, that means 347 students will only receive that amount or less and it won’t go any higher even if you have many dependents or low income. What you get, is well what you get. Adult basic education will be using its existing funds which are from the State.
As a tribal college community we need to convince our heads of state to keep Indian Education a priority and to give us more funding or at least avoid budget cuts for our programs.
The new budget brings with it many pros and cons just like any other bill or law. All the cuts to programs across the board are supposed to save our country trillions of dollars, which is not a bad thing because if our country starts saving money it will bring itself out of the recession and the faltering economy. But then again, spending money also helps our economy, too.
