DURANGO, Colo. – A liberal arts college is being threatened with cuts in its free tuition program for Native students and is being targeted – unfairly, some charge – because cash-strapped Colorado is looking to cut spending wherever it can.

Fort Lewis College, nearing the century mark and a former boarding school, offers the tuition program as part of a federal trust commitment and will not discontinue it for Indian students because “we won’t violate state or federal law or terms of the treaty,” said Danny Tomlinson, a long-time lobbyist for the school.

Of 753 Native students at the school in 2009, $3,000 was assessed and then reimbursed for in-state tuition for 120 students at a total of $360,000, but the state paid just over $16,000 each in out-of-state tuition for the other 633 American Indian students for a total of $10 million, officials said.

The largest number of students at Fort Lewis are Navajo, followed by Native Alaskans and then students from tribes in Oklahoma, including Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, and many others, according to college officials.

Proposed by the state is a cut of $3,000 in its reimbursement rate to the college for 2011 tuition for out-of-state Native students, constituting a $1.8 million reduction. It would be coupled with a proposed overall cut to the college of about $4 million which the state calculated at a 31 percent rate, higher than the 21 percent average reduction rate for other colleges in the state, officials said.

The tuition proposal would “essentially punish the college for upholding the agreement between the state and federal government to provide Native American students with a free education,” said Mitch Davis, the college’s public information officer. The cuts would have “a severe negative impact on all students.”

He pointed out that the possible tuition reimbursement cut would be added to harsh reductions enacted about 20 years ago that put the college “well below everybody else” in funding. Fort Lewis’ funding per student is about $5,500 compared to $8,000-plus per student at comparable state colleges because of the earlier cuts, he said.

“The state is out of money, and I think that a number of proposals are being talked about at the legislature this week – about how to either generate revenue or cut expenditures,” Tomlinson said.

“But the Native American status of Fort Lewis has been part of the treaty signed in the early 1900s and affirmed in the courts in the 1930s, and the reimbursement for Fort Lewis for tuition-free access for Native American students has always been part of the overall funding for the college.”

The proposed funding cuts would represent about $500 per student and could have a “crippling effect” on Native and non-Native education, said Steve Schwartz, the college’s vice president for finance. The proposed reductions could diminish the college’s $41 million budget “significantly.”

If the measures were enacted, “(Native) students would still be admitted as at present – there are no plans to limit the number of Native American students,” Tomlinson said. “That can’t happen.”

“Fort Lewis College understands the difficulty faced by the state in balancing the budget. The college also understands the (Education) Department’s desire to limit the liability associated with the growth of the waiver. However, it is not appropriate to single out one institution for cuts,” the college said in a statement.

The state is concerned about a 60 percent increase in out-of-state tuition reimbursement costs over the last five years, but the Colorado Department of Education will be participating in a strategic planning effort to address fiscal woes and “it seems premature to single out one institution and one program for cuts,” Schwartz said.

The college is exploring the possibility of federal funding to offset all or a portion of the Native American waiver and is asking the state for coordination “to assess the potential for federal funding of this commitment.”

Rico Munn, director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, said the proposal would not affect treaty or trust obligations and Native students would still receive free tuition.

Fort Lewis sets out-of-state tuition at about $16,000, but the average out-of-state tuition in Colorado is approximately $13,000, he said, describing the controversy as an accounting issue between the state and the college.

State Rep. Karen Middleton (D-Aurora), a co-sponsor of the bill, said the proposed legislation would lower the tuition rate charged to Native American students regardless of residence and their tuition would still be paid at 100 percent.

The undergraduate college started life as Fort Lewis army post near Durango, but in 1891 was closed by the government and turned over to the Department of the Interior as an Indian boarding school which, in 1911, was to be “maintained by the state as an institution of learning to which Indian students will be admitted free of tuition and on an equality with white students.”

The state legislature attempted in 1971 to limit tuition waivers for Indian students to those who were residents of Colorado, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court which had held that such action would constitute a breach of contract by the state.