Amie Hammond said she has experienced firsthand the hostile actions U administrators have taken toward American Indian students.
Hammond came to the U last year to take part in a teacher training program for American Indian students. She hoped to become a teacher and eventually return to her home on the Ute Mountain Reservation where she would work to improve a troubled school system.
But after about a week into her first semester, she learned the U had returned the grant for the program and discontinued it.
“It was a lot for me to go off the reservation,” Hammond said. “So when I lost that program, I wanted to leave.”
To protest administrators’ Actions, Hammond joined about 30 other students and U employees who marched across campus Thursday. The group gathered to call attention to what they call a pattern of unfriendly actions the U has taken toward American Indian students.
The rally was organized by The Coalition to Protect American Indian Education Rights, which released a statement before the rally listing its grievances against the U. The list included charges that the U wrongfully discontinued the American Indian Teacher Training Program, has failed to uphold an agreement that it would create scholarships for Ute students in exchange for using the Ute nickname for athletic teams and “mysteriously” put the director of the American Indian Resource Center on administrative leave, among other complaints.
Octavio Villalpando, the U associate vice president for diversity, said the group’s claims are largely false. He said the U respects the rights of students to protest “even though we do not, do not, agree with any of the allegations.”
“We’re interested in talking to any students who have concerns about how they’re treated at the University of Utah,” he said.
He said the U has dramatically increased support for American Indian students in the last year, citing the opening of the American Indian Resource Center in April. He confirmed that the center’s director, Beverly Fenton, has been put on administrative leave, but said her status is a personnel issue and has nothing to do with the group’s complaints.
Administrators have also defended their decision to return a $2 million grant for the American Indian Education Program, saying they did not have the additional $1.5 million required to start the program.
As the protesters walked into the Union Free Speech Area, Joel Arvizo, a doctoral student of Chicano/Navajo descent, read a call to action blasting the U for not upholding its promises to American Indian students. He told students standing near the Ute Brave statue outside the Union that the group is fed up with “fictitious promises that exist to appease.”
“Our objective is to make sure the U honors its commitment,” he yelled into a megaphone. “We hope to raise awareness of the injustices.”
About a dozen protesters started the march at the American Indian Resource Center earlier in the afternoon. They were joined by about 20 other students as they made their way to the Union Free Speech Area and eventually the Park Building, where the U’s top administrators work. The march lasted for several hours as the group stopped frequently to talk to students and read its call to action over a megaphone.
Many of the protesters carried signs with examples of how the Ute name and image has been misused by sports fans at the U, including a T-shirt depicting an American Indian with a headdress and large nose roasting a frog, a competitor’s mascot.
Debra Yazzie, a graduate student in engineering who organized the protest, said American Indian students are tired of being depicted as “cartoon characters8212;savages with feathers and drums.”
Other students carried signs reinforcing the argument that Ute students should be better supported if the U is going to use the tribe’s name for its teams. One sign read “Chris Hill it’s time to pay the bill,” a reference to the U’s athletic director. Another sign read “Trademark equals money.”
Debate over use of the Ute nickname has been an ongoing issue since 2005 when the NCAA included the U on a watch list of schools that use racist and insensitive athletic mascots and nicknames. The NCAA removed the U from the list after leaders of the Northern Ute Tribe signed a memorandum of understanding with the U, expressing their support for continued use of the nickname.
But some Ute leaders have since criticized the U for not creating scholarships to support Ute students, which they believed was part of the deal. Fred Esplin, vice president for institutional advancement at the U, defended the school’s position on the scholarships in 2006 saying there was never a quid-quo-pro agreement.