From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Oct. 3, 1987:

Students at Haskell Indian Junior College this week were relieved to hear that Congress had acted to prevent the Bureau of Indian Affairs from charging tuition at Haskell and the bureau’s other two post-secondary schools. Under a plan that had been announced by the BIA in January, students at the three BIA institutions would have been charged a tuition of $850 a year beginning in 1988. That charge would have been a barrier to education, according to some students on the Haskell campus. “It would have been very hard for me to have gone to school,” said Kenton Martinez, a sophomore from Parker, Arizona. “My tribal agency probably would pay for it, but a lot of students wouldn’t be as lucky … I’m just barely getting by on what they fund me with now.” The House and Senate had both passed appropriations bills containing a provision prohibiting the BIA from charging tuition at Haskell, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute at Albuquerque, N.M., and the Institute of American Indian Arts at Santa Fe, N.M. Both bills had also called for $1.25 million to be allocated to the agency for fiscal year 1988 for building repair and maintenance.