Brian Melendez can trace his family history back to an encampment on the land where the Reynolds School of Journalism now stands, before they were forcibly removed to make room for the old Mackey Stadium.

“Not too long ago, my great-great-grandmother gave birth where the University of Nevada, Reno football statue is currently located. That hillside was once our people’s traditional homes,” said Melendez, a citizen of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, who advocated for a Native American tuition waiver for years.

The construction of Nevada’s only land-grant university required the removal of tribes from their homelands and gave the university the right to fund itself through the sale of those unceded lands — a right it has to this day.

UNR is also a stronghold for the accredited teaching of the Northern Paiute language — a language tribes in Nevada are fighting to preserve. The opportunity to achieve fluency in the language of the state’s original peoples is a particular draw for tribal citizens attending the university.

Paiute culture and language has been studied by academics at Nevada universities since the institutions were established, and countless graduate degrees awarded to non-tribal students have resulted from the use and study of cultural materials housed in Nevada’s universities.

Still, less than 1% of tribal citizens attend college in Nevada, let alone graduate school, says tribal leadership. One of the largest barriers is the mounting cost of higher education.

So when the Nevada Legislature passed a law in late Spring 2021 prohibiting the Nevada System of Higher Education from charging tuition to any Native American student who belongs to a federally recognized tribe in Nevada or a descendant of an enrolled member, tribes and students rejoiced.

Native graduate students at UNR took to saying a phrase that summarized their point of view on higher education: While the bill “cannot decolonize the academy” they will work to “indigenize the academy.”

The timing of the bill’s passage left only a few months for  the state’s colleges and universities to implement the program and get the word out to Native American students about the waiver in time for the 2021-2022 school year.  During the first school year of implementation, $457,449 in tuition and fees were waived for 140 students, .

As of October, 73 students have benefited from the waiver at UNR alone, accounting for about $330,000 in waived tuition this year. For the 2022-23 academic year, another 50 students have applied for the waiver at UNR, said Daphne Emm Hooper, the school’s director of Indigenous Relations.

Since the waiver passed, UNR has seen a 13% increase in Native American undergraduate students and a 3% increase in graduate students.

“Part of it is that we’re seeing more graduate students coming in,” Hooper said “It created access to additional funding. Graduate students don’t have access to as much financial aid. The waiver applies towards graduate courses, I think that’s why we are seeing more Native students seeking out more advanced degrees.”

‘This has been life-changing’

Alyssa Sweet, 20, a descendant of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe, is still an undergraduate at the Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. Last year, 24 students at the community college benefited from tuition waiver amounting to about $30,000 in fees waived.

Next semester, Sweet is transferring to UNR now that she has more stable funding for her educational goals of becoming an elementary school teacher.

“The only reason I’m able to go to the university is because of this waiver,” Sweet said. “And it’s because I’m Native. It makes me feel good about who I am.”

Before the tuition waiver, Sweet could only afford to attend about two classes a semester at Truckee Meadows Community College, a story she’s seen repeated by other Native students.

“Without the fee waiver I honestly would have had to drop out this semester. I’ve been having a lot of financial issues and I can’t rely on most help,” Sweet said. “This has been life-changing for me just because I can rely on something else, something I know that’s going to be there.”

The process of confirming Sweet’s eligibility with records of her family’s tribal enrollments has been complicated, she said. A lack of communication and coordination between higher education and tribes has made navigating the waivers requirements difficult. Still, she says the process led her to reconnect with the Lovelock Paiute Tribe and she’s taken steps to enroll as a citizen of the tribe.

“I think that it’s really important for the school administration to have the knowledge and know how to help us with it or always have someone we can ask. I feel like there should be more resources,” Sweet said.

Higher education administrators in Nevada agree that as awareness of the fee waiver grows so will the number of Native students applying.

More than one NSHE institution has added additional staff and programs to provide wrap-around supports for Native American students since the tuition waiver was passed.

Native American student advocate at Truckee Meadows Community College, Delina Trottier, is one of those newly hired staffers. Her outreach was the reason Sweet first found out about the tuition waiver.

“Since August, I’ve been reaching out to the Native American student population and encouraging them to look at the waiver and seeing if they meet the requirements or if they need any help applying,” Trottier said.

She’s also a student at the University of Nevada, Reno and a citizen of the Onion Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. But for the last 10 years she’s called Pyramid Lake in Nevada home.

“One day my daughter will get to utilize this waiver,” Trottier said.

Many Native students had some awareness of the tuition waiver through their own social networks, but didn’t know where to start or how to apply, said Trottier. Soon she was receiving steady emails from students seeking guidance.

“I used to be a student at Truckee Meadows and they didn’t have this position,” said Trottier. “I was kind of timid and shy to even ask for help when I needed it. I’m trying to be that person I needed when I went to TMCC,” Trottier said.

Connecting with tribal leaders and arranging information meetings and tours with high school students has helped bridge a gap between tribes and the community college, said Trottier.

“There’s a lot of interest from the tribes,” Trottier said.

Karin Hilgersom, the president of Truckee Meadows Community College, said she hopes to grow the program and connect with more tribal nations through public higher education.

“This important fee waiver also started a series of events over the past year that strengthened our relationship with tribes and their representatives. In May 2022, I was honored to award Arlan Melendez, Chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and TMCC alumnus, with our President’s Medal,” Hilgersom said. “We are proud of these efforts and are dedicated to serving all students with accessible, affordable educational opportunities.”

As of December, 16 students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have benefitted from the free tuition waiver.  Most of those students are undergraduates. Zack Goodwin, UNLV’s executive director of financial aid and scholarships, said he suspects the waiver will encourage more of those same students and others across Nevada to eventually apply to more costly graduate programs.

“We did have more people applying for it than we did in its initial year,” said Goodwin. “I think the word is pretty much out at this point.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on and .

The Clark County School District wants to make sex education mandatory unless parents explicitly opt their child out — a switch from the current process wherein parents must explicitly opt their child in to health education.

CCSD, the nation’s fifth-largest school district, declined to elaborate on its plans but included the proposal in a list of it plans to submit for the upcoming legislative session, which begins in February.

Nevada is one of where parents or guardians must give permission before students can enroll in sex ed. The others are Utah, Texas, Mississippi, and Arizona.

State Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, a Democrat, introduced in 2019 which would have made sex education opt-out and required teaching statewide evidence-based and factual information about puberty, pregnancy, parenting, body image, and gender stereotypes.

The bill died in committee, but Bilbray-Axelrod plans to reintroduce it in the upcoming session.

Under state statutes, schools are only required to teach medically accurate sex education about AIDS.

Nevada ranked first in the nation for having the of primary & secondary (P&S) syphilis in 2020, the most current data available.

Only 17 states in America require sexual education to be medically accurate, . States’ definitions of what constitutes medically accurate sex education differ substantially nationwide — with some having health departments review the curriculum and others having the curriculum based on information from sources that medical professionals use.

The and the burgeoning public health crisis of have renewed interest nationally in expanding efforts to revamp sex education.

CCSD currently does teach .

“I’m not worried about CCSD,” said Bilbray-Axelrod, “but I am more worried about other counties.”

Without a statewide mandate more rural counties and at-risk populations like homeless youth or children in the foster care system, who face additional barriers to getting a guardian or parent’s signature, are left underserved.

Nevada consistently has the and has the highest rate of children nationally.

Both and have higher rates of STIs than their peers.

“There are homeless children who don’t have parents to opt in to sex education,” Bilbray-Axelrod said.

While 31% of Nevada high school students reported having sexual intercourse at least once, 44% did not use a condom, the only birth control method that prevents STIs,

Of the roughly 26 million new cases of STIs in the U.S., half are among people ages 15 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the CDC reports that medically accurate sex education can prevent HIV, STIs, and unintended pregnancy for teens and young adults.

Reported cases of gonorrhea, P&S syphilis, and syphilis among newborns () were all up in 2020 compared to 2019, and early data indicates the trend continued in 2021,

Bilbray-Axelrod’s 2019 bill wasn’t the only sex education-related bill in recent years.

In 2017, , which would have periodically updated course content to be medically accurate, was passed mostly by Democrats, and had , but was vetoed by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval.

“While local school boards and educators play an important role in sex education courses, the role of the parents in this system is most important,” said Sandoval in his veto statement.

If the issue does arise in the upcoming session, it will no doubt raise the ire of conservative groups, like Power2Parent, whose president and CEO Erin Phillips lobbied for that Sandoval veto.

Phillips acknowledged that vulnerable groups like the homeless and foster youth have a lot of needs, but said she doesn’t believe opt-out sex education is high on that list.

“That’s a solution in search of a problem,” she said.

At the national level, Nevada U.S. Democratic Rep. Dina Titus co-sponsored the ​​, which would require sex education curriculum to be comprehensive and medically accurate. Neither that bill nor a measure in the Senate has moved beyond introduction.

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The Clark County School District hired a pest control company last month to trap and remove close to two dozen cats from a Las Vegas high school, but officials refuse to say what was to become of the creatures.

“Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife will do 1 month of trapping for feral cats underneath the portable buildings that are at the School,” says the company’s for $6,000 to trap cats at Desert Pines High School. “The traps will be checked daily and re baited. … Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife can’t guarantee that all cats will be removed because in this process more cats could come.”

Tabitha Linton, owner of Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife, says her company has a permit from the state to trap and euthanize pests, including cats. She says cat trapping is not a routine request, but one the company has performed.

State law a pest as “any form of animal or vegetable life detrimental to the crops, horticulture, livestock, public health, wildlife, quality of water and beneficial uses of land in this state.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

“With that, if the pest control falls within this criteria, (the law) does not restrict trapping and euthanasia,” says Ciara Ressel, spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture.

The company declined to disclose how it kills cats.

“Is it a pest animal or is it a lost pet? I have no idea how these pest control companies can possibly tell the difference,” says Keith Williams, founder of Community Cat Coalition Clark County. “If it’s a pest animal, they can take it out and shoot it. If it’s a pet, they’ve stolen someone’s animal and euthanized it illegally.”

Linton declined to say what was to become of the cats at Desert Pines HS, adding the school’s principal, Isaac Stein, instructed her not to divulge their fate to the media. “I’ve been instructed by Principal Stein that any inquiries have to be redirected back to him.”

Stein and CCSD also refused to say what was to become of the cats.

“The school explored options for cleaning sites contaminated by felines with outside entities specializing in complying with local regulations and the humane capture and care of animals,” a statement from CCSD said.

But cat lovers know there’s nothing humane about removing a colony of cats.

“You can’t relocate feral cats. They’ll kill themselves trying to get back where they were.” says Nancie Anastopolous of Community Cat Angels, a nonprofit that treats sick and injured felines, and finds homes for those suitable for adoption.

In October, Gina Greisen of Nevada Voters for Animals, got wind of the plan to trap and remove the cats and persuaded Stein to allow rescue organizations to intervene. The pest control company retreated, and volunteers from Community Cat Angels (CCA) trapped some two dozen cats, who were neutered, sterilized, and returned to the campus at no cost to CCSD. Medical care for two cats cost CCA more than $1,500. At least two of the cats were socialized and ultimately adopted.

“If you have nothing to hide, and you’re just doing TNR (trap, neuter, release) which is totally legal, why did everyone clam up?” asks Greisen, who worries that owned cats in the neighborhood adjacent to the school could have been lured by the bait, trapped, and removed by the pest control company.

That’s what happened to a Florida woman whose outdoor cat was trapped and legally killed. The has since been changed.

“I’d like to know how they are euthanizing these animals and if they are looking for an owner or checking for microchips,” says Williams. “When people call the pest control company and get inquisitive, they get hung up on. The company refuses to answer any of those questions.”

School board trustee Linda Cavazos says the cat trapping contract was included in the board’s consent agenda, in which smaller items are approved in one motion.

“We’re only briefed on the big ticket items,” she says, adding she “was not aware of any contract like this at all.” Cavazos says she inquired about the contract and was told Superintendent Jesus Jara would review it. She says she has not heard back. Jara did not return calls.

Revolving door

Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Clark County fund the Animal Foundation (TAF) and support its community cat program, where found cats – socialized as well as unsocialized – are vaccinated, sterilized, and released where they came from in order to keep the shelter population from exploding and to avoid a higher rate of euthanasia.

The program is not without its , who have grown more vociferous since learning of  CCSD’s foiled effort to remove a colony, and complain cats are caught in a revolving door.

“It sickens me that we have a taxpayer-funded community cat program, which releases every cat found on the street where they can then just be picked up by another taxpayer-funded effort, and ultimately euthanized,” says Anastopolous.

TAF’s CEO Hilarie Grey did not respond to requests for comment.

An unsterilized cat averages three litters of four kittens a year, according to experts, a rate that can’t be absorbed by shelters and rescues via adoption, giving rise to a debate over the most humane means of controlling overpopulation – TNR or catch and kill.

Is catch and kill, which is widely in Australia, an effective means of population control?

“It can be, if they rounded up and killed about 10,000 cats a year,” says Williams, who estimates the valley’s feral cat population at more than 200,000. “That’s why we try to TNR 10,000 cats a year. That’s what it takes to actually affect the population.”

Some local governments, such as Henderson, require trapped animals to be turned over to be evaluated for adoption or euthanized. But in most of Southern Nevada, so-called community cats – which run the gamut from socialized and abandoned domestic cats to unsocialized ferals, are protected by law and allowed to run free.

“You can trap feral cats for the purpose of having them spayed or neutered and returned to the same area,” says Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa, adding that county code and state law “prohibit the unjustifiable killing of animals.”

The City of Las Vegas, home to Desert Pines HS, gives animal control officials, not exterminators, the authority to declare a cat or a colony a public nuisance.

“The city’s preference would be that pest control companies take captured feral cats to an appropriate rescue or shelter,” says City of Las Vegas spokesman Jace Radke.

While animal control officers have the right to trap a community cat that is deemed a threat to public health or safety, a licensed veterinarian must decide if the cat poses an imminent danger or has bitten a person, in which cases it may be euthanized, the says.

Animal control officials who investigated the CCSD trapping contract say the pest control company has agreed to abide by TNR procedures should it resume trapping at the school.

Greisen wants the Department of Agriculture, which regulates exterminators, to investigate whether pest control companies are illegally disposing of community cats.  She’s also hoping a legislator will ask for an opinion on whether cats, under state law, are a pest.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on and .