Decision transforms alumni into activists

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Outrage over the decision by Kamehameha Schools trustees to accept a non-Hawaiian student to the Maui campus has set opponents into motion throughout the Islands — from a statewide petition urging trustees to change their admissions policy to a movement on Maui to recruit more Hawaiian students.

Kamehameha Schools trustees got the message during Monday's often-heated meeting. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

"My comment will be, 'You did a stupid thing, a very stupid thing,' " Stender said. "These guys are operating in an ivory tower like the old trustees did. And I should know."

Stender was a member of the last Kamehameha Schools board but is regarded as a hero in some Hawaiian circles for blowing the whistle on trustees' overbearing style and mismanagement.

Stender plans to ask Ing to make a public statement that the board will satisfy every Hawaiian child's education first "and once they've done that they can do anything they damn well please," Stender said. "If we don't get a satisfactory response out of the trustees, we need to do the marches again. We need to do the rallies again."

Ing did not return telephone calls seeking comment yesterday.

Trustees apologized for poor communications, but defended their decision Monday night to an angry auditorium packed with Kamehameha alumni, saying that excluding non-Hawaiians put the schools' tax exempt status in jeopardy.

Yesterday the trustees met in private and directed staff to devise a plan for better communicating board policies and decisions.

"It's clear that we need to do a better job of talking to our community and that's the charge that they've given us," spokesman Kekoa Paulsen said.

Kamehameha alumni and supporters in the meantime are circulating a petition from shopping malls to Hawaiian homesteads and predict they'll gather more than 1,000 signatures.

It reads: "This petition seeks to change the trustees' current admission policy so that Hawaiian applicants who are the beneficiaries of the trust can gain admission and benefit from the education Princess Pauahi intended to provide for them."

Maui attorney Cynthia Kanoholani Wong (Kamehameha Class of 1986), wrote the petition with her husband, Patrick, who is also a lawyer. They hope it persuades trustees to rescind their policy without the need for a lawsuit.

"We don't want to take it to that level," Wong said. "At this point we hope the trustees listen to the voice of the Hawaiian people and we feel that if they do, they'll amend their policy."

Maile Jachowski, the 1977 Kamehameha valedictorian, was preparing to staff a petition booth at the Kahului Mall last night because "this issue has really got me in the heart. We hope to get the signatures of every concerned citizen, Hawaiian or non-Hawaiian."

Retired Circuit Court Judge Boyd P. Mossman, now president of the Maui chapter of the Kamehameha Schools alumni association, wants the chapter to develop a plan to recruit more Hawaiian students for the next school year.

The Maui campus will have about 240 openings from the sixth through 10th grades in the fall and "we can't afford not to have Hawaiians applying for these openings," Mossman said. The potential of so many spots going to non-Hawaiians "would be a very, very, very worst case scenario."

Maui has roughly 5,000 students with part Hawaiian blood, and Mossman would like to see a program where public school teachers who are Kamehameha alumni would identify promising Hawaiian students. He hopes the alumni association can help with an advertising campaign and work with alumni in the community to find other potential Kamehameha students.

The tuition and expenses — about $1,400 for high school and $1,000 for elementary school — should not be a major problem, Mossman said.

"Kamehameha is very liberal in giving financial aid," he said.

Other Hawaiians with close ties to Kamehameha Schools defended the trustees' decision yesterday.

Beadie Kanahele Dawson had been legal counsel for Na Pua a Ke Ali'i Pauahi, a group formed "because the prior trustees were secretive, arrogant, misbehaving and the Kamehameha 'ohana said enough," Dawson said.

She characterized the current emotions directed at the board as "anger and a great deal of rancor. I'd almost call it fury mostly because people are very conscious of the tremendous hurt that occurs when a child is turned down. Many, many families have been in that position."

But the trustees had no alternative, Dawson said.

"They made a very prudent, legal decision, one in which I support," she said. "It was just a major blunder in the way that it was executed. They just totally screwed up."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.

Correction: Maile Jachowski is a 1977 Kamehameha valedictorian. A previous version of this story had a different year.