Longtime Diné College - Tuba City employee fired

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Harold Joseph was fired from his job at Diné College last week, after 14 years directing the school's Tuba City campus, and Harold Joseph isn't the only one who's not happy about it.

William Hoycott, vice president of the campus's student government, says most of the school's 280-odd Tuba City students are upset with the decision. They held a meeting at the local chapter house about Joseph's termination Sunday and plan to ask the chapter to pressure the college into investigating the matter.

Joseph said he'll be taking advantage of the school's grievance policies to appeal the decision.

In her Jan. 10 termination letter to Joseph, Tanya Keith, the school's dean of Arizona campuses, accuses Joseph of "egregious misappropriation of college funds in excess of $100,000."

Keith goes on to accuse Joseph of disobeying her orders.

"The specific causes for this decision are continuing defiance of the dean to manage financial resources within policies, exceptionally poor performance as Tuba City fiscal (manager), insubordination in failure to comply with directive to discontinue obligations of college financial resources in excess of approved budget, and breech of your assigned duties and responsibilities," she writes.

"In continuous defiance, you have obligated college funds for the spring 2005 semester that have not been approved in the college budget nor approved by the dean, vice president, or president," she added.

Joseph denies any wrongdoing and says he was surprised by the letter, which ordered him to clear out of his office by 5 p.m. that day.

"I don't really know what the basis of this is," he said, puzzled by how exactly Keith came up with the $100,000 figure. "It was a shocker, because I wasn't expecting anything like that. I'm still pretty much going through that shock."

Joseph remembers Keith, who came on board last summer, telling him about her concerns that the campus was offering more classes that spring than it had resources for, but said she never issued any directives regarding what to do about it.

He's not sure, but believes he and Keith may have interpreted the campus's budget differently.

When the Tuba City campus received its operating budget at the start of the fall, 2004, semester, the school's spring, 2005, financial forecast was still uncertain. The Navajo Nation Council had yet to approve the school's request for supplemental funding, which eventually came.

Joseph was under the impression that the money his campus received in the fall was for that semester only. Maybe, he speculated, Keith thought the money should be made to last into the spring semester as well.

In September, said Joseph, Keith even e-mailed him to say she would be putting together a personnel improvement plan for him to follow. But since Keith marked the e-mail "low priority," and since he never heard of the plan again, he didn't think much of it.

Joseph's actions, Keith writes in her termination letter, " have adverse impact(ed) the delivery of our educational services to the Navajo Nation, specifically in Tuba City."

Hoycott says he's seen no fallout from Joseph's directorship, and he doesn't buy Keith's charges.

"I think they're bogus," he said.

He and others plan to meet with the campus's interim director, Kathy Bahe, the director of the school's Window Rock campus, today for some answers.

If anyone's to blame for the Tuba City campus's troubles, the thinks it's the higher-ups in Tsaile, home to the school's central offices, for ignoring the branch.

"The only reason (Joseph) needs more money is because the student population is growing," he said.

Since Joseph's departure, Hoycott said Keith has already taken 15 classes off of the spring semester roster, classes some students need to graduate.

"I know a lot of people whose classes have been cut," he said.

Diné College President Ferlin Clark said the classes were cut because fewer than 10 students the school's standard threshold when deciding whether or not to offer a class had enrolled, not because of a lack of funds.

But Clark would not discuss the reason's for Joseph's termination, which he said was Keith's call, content to let the matter work itself out through the school's grievance policies.

Those policies, said Joseph, require him to file his grievance first with his immediate supervisor, Keith. That's not likely to change anything; so, it's up the chain of command from there, he said.

"I'm hoping that this situation will be resolved, because I've committed all this time and all this effort to the college," he said. "I did what I thought I was supposed to do."