photo by: Conrad Swanson

A sign at the entrance to Haskell Indian Nations University is shown Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.

The chairpersons of two U.S. House committees sent a letter Tuesday to the director of the Bureau of Indian Education expressing concern over the federal agency’s failure to address concerns of Haskell Indian Nations University students over a variety of issues at the Lawrence school, including allegations of sexual assault and other serious misconduct.

The letter notes that a congressional investigation is underway and requests that the BIE provide an assortment of records, including unredacted copies of the report that, as the Journal-World reported in April, found evidence of “frivolous” investigations of staff, an athletic department in “disarray” and improperly handled complaints of sexual assault, among other misconduct.

In the letter to BIE Director Tony Dearman, four Republican lawmakers — Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Committee on Education and the workforce; Rep. Bruce Westerman , chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources; Rep. Burgess Owens, chair of the Subcomittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development; and Rep. Paul Gosar, chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations — express discontent with how allegations of misconduct at the university have been handled and concern over claims that the BIE omitted information from reports that were intended to lay bare and address misconduct.

The representatives also cite concerns that the investigative report about Haskell may have been altered between the time it was submitted, Nov. 7, 2022, and the time it was ultimately dated, Jan. 13, 2023.

As the Journal-World reported, questions of whether the report even existed had swirled for over a year, starting when a group of Haskell students sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in March 2023 claiming that a lengthy investigation had taken place on campus but had yet to be made public.

The lawmakers in Tuesday’s letter also say they are “troubled” by how the BIE managed the report — repeatedly refusing to produce the report, as the Journal-World reported, producing an entirely different report in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and ultimately releasing the heavily redacted report after being legally compelled to do so.

The records requested by the congressional committees to assist in their investigation — to be handed over by July 10 — include an unredacted copy of the report from Nov. 7, 2022, an unredacted copy of the report from Jan. 13, 2023, and all attached exhibits, plus an explanation of all edits, amendments, deletions or other modifications made to the report between the two dates.

The letter describes the report as containing “serious assertions and findings of misconduct at HINU that ravaged HINU student and faculty welfare,” including several cases of sexual assault that were reportedly disregarded.