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Students Demand U. Minnesota Expand Native American Scholarships

Students Demand U. Minnesota Expand Native American Scholarships

“A new tuition support program for the U’s campuses, including the Twin Cities, began last fall, but it has limits.”

University of Minnesota students demanded the school expand the Native American tuition program. The school system doesn’t have the funds, though. From MPR:

Students and activists protested in the freezing cold to urge the University of Minnesota to follow through on promises to tribal communities. At the top of their list was an expansion of a tuition program that they say too few can access.

“[It] is kind of frustrating and hard for the students that are here already and aren’t getting the support that we feel like we need,” said Laila Gourd, a sophomore from the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota.

A new tuition support program for the U’s campuses, including the Twin Cities, began last fall, but it has limits.

The university’s Morris campus has had a full tuition waiver program for all American Indian students since its inception, as stipulated by federal legislation and Minnesota statute due to the site’s history as a former boarding school. In 2021, the university announced the Native American Promise Tuition Program to extend tuition support for Native students attending its four other campuses.

At the time, University president Joan Gabel said the “program is a meaningful step to increasing access and continuing to improve retention and graduation rates while closing opportunity gaps.”

Unlike at Morris, the new program offers free or reduced tuition, depending on family income, limited to enrolled members of Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized tribal nations. Students must also be first-year undergraduates or transfer students from tribal colleges.

Eighteen of 146 Native freshmen received funding through the Native American Promise Tuition Program in fall 2022, according to reporting by the Star Tribune.

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Comments

The Gentle Grizzly | March 20, 2023 at 3:34 pm

Demand demand demand…

“The school system doesn’t have the funds, though.”
Go, Woke Students! Beat Woke Administration!
Remember — if everybody had the same amount of money, money wouldn’t be worth anything anymore!
You can fund anything you want, if you just divide by zero!
Ask your DEI department! The Science is Settled!

Anyone ask the casinos to chip in yet?

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to MajorWood. | March 21, 2023 at 7:31 am

    I heard a rumor that the Roulette band of the Casino tribe is loaded, so, maybe they will.

    Or not.

EVERY time I read “Students demand,” I immediately think “Why haven’t they been expelled?”
You’re a student. That means you don’t run the organization, and that your purpose in being there is to shut up and learn. If you think you know more than the people running the place, then why are you paying to attend, again?

Perhaps they could simply return the Twin Cities campus to the Sioux Nation, from whom it was “stolen,” per their land acknowledgement.