The One Time Kamehameha Schools "Screwed Up Major"
In 2002, Kamehameha Schools admitted one non-Hawaiian student. The response from the Native Hawaiian community was swift and passionate. What happened next (and what it reveals about Kamehameha's mission and challenges) remains relevant to understanding the school's current legal battle.
July 11, 2002: The Announcement
On a Thursday in July 2002, Kamehameha Schools held a press conference to announce something that hadn't happened in 40 years: they had admitted a student with no Native Hawaiian ancestry.
The student was an eighth-grade boy named Kalani Rosell, who would attend Kamehameha's Maui campus in Pukalani. He was a straight-A student who had recently been recognized for academic achievement and community service.
School officials emphasized this wasn't a policy change. CEO Hamilton McCubbin explained that Kamehameha had doubled available spaces on the Maui campus for the 2002-03 school year. After admitting all qualified Hawaiian applicants, one seat remained open. Under Kamehameha's longstanding policy, that seat went to the next qualified applicant (who happened to be non-Hawaiian).
"This is not a new policy," McCubbin stressed. Kamehameha's admissions gave preference to Native Hawaiians but allowed non-Hawaiians to be admitted "when the list of Hawaiian applicants is exhausted and space is available."
The next morning, both Honolulu newspapers broke the story on their front pages.
Within hours, the Native Hawaiian community's response made clear this was not going to be a quiet news cycle.
Why the Community Reacted So Strongly
To understand the backlash, you need to understand what Kamehameha Schools represents to the Native Hawaiian community.
Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop established the schools in her 1884 will specifically to educate children of Native Hawaiian ancestry. The schools sit on Hawaiian monarchy lands. For many Native Hawaiians, Kamehameha isn't just a private school. It's a sacred trust, a fulfillment of a royal mandate, and one of the few institutions explicitly dedicated to Native Hawaiian advancement.
In 2002, educational statistics for Native Hawaiian children were sobering. They scored below the state average on standardized tests, were overrepresented in special education, had higher absence rates, and were less likely to graduate from high school or attend college. Thousands of Native Hawaiian families applied to Kamehameha each year, hoping their children would receive educational opportunities they felt the public school system wasn't providing.
The anger wasn't about Kalani Rosell personally. By all accounts, he was a deserving student. The anger was about what his admission represented: a seat at Kamehameha that a Native Hawaiian child didn't get.
The Immediate Response
Kamehameha received "many angry telephone calls and e-mails" protesting the decision. The reaction came from across the Native Hawaiian community (from the highest levels of Hawaiian leadership to individual alumni and parents).
Haunani Apoliona, a trustee of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, called it "a momentous, monumental move" that would generate "a mixture of feelings from Hawaiians, ranging from disagreement to agreement." The disagreement quickly became the dominant voice.
Oswald Stender, a former Kamehameha trustee who had helped reform the school's governance in the late 1990s, immediately "fielded about a dozen calls" from upset alumni and parents. Two of his own nieces had recently been denied entry to Kamehameha Maui.
"You cannot tell me that in all of Maui, Molokai and Lanai there is not one more Hawaiian child that could go to that school," Stender told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He called the decision "frightening."
The Deeper Question About Mission
The controversy quickly surfaced a fundamental tension about Kamehameha's purpose.
Dr. Maile Jachowski, a Kamehameha alumna and Maui pediatrician, argued the decision "did not fulfill the wishes of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop." She worried it sent a troubling message: "If you're not smart enough, we're not going to help you."
She feared that opening the door even slightly would "eventually lead to many non-Hawaiian students attending Kamehameha Schools on Maui," especially since Kamehameha's tuition was much lower than competing private schools.
Some alumni agreed that test scores shouldn't be the determining factor.
"I am more interested in the students who don't meet the criteria. They need the education more," said Roy Benham, a former president of the Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association. "I would lean over backwards to bring them in."
Others saw the situation differently. Toni Lee, president of Kamehameha's Oahu Alumni Association, viewed the Maui case as an isolated situation resulting from campus expansion. "What can you say when there isn't enough [Hawaiian] people who apply?" In Lee's view, admitting a qualified non-Hawaiian was "the pono thing to do" (the just thing) once no wait-listed Hawaiian candidates remained.
July 15, 2002: Six Hundred People at Kapalama
Four days after the announcement, Kamehameha's trustees convened a special forum at the Kapalama campus auditorium on Oahu.
About 600 parents and alumni showed up.
The meeting lasted two and a half hours. Emotions ran high.
Alumni speaker Poahi Ryan addressed the trustees directly: "This is not about bitter parents not getting their kids in… This is about serving our Hawaiian children. We are not here for apologies."
Others demanded accountability. Kawika Trask called for CEO McCubbin's resignation (to loud applause), insisting Kamehameha was failing thousands of Hawaiian children who still needed education. Throughout the night, calls of "Resign!" were repeated from the audience.
Attendees also criticized how the decision was communicated. They complained it was made without community input, reminiscent of the communication breakdowns during the late-1990s Bishop Estate turmoil when trustees had been ousted amid scandal. "The concern here is that we've been there and done that," said Kamehameha teacher David Eyre.
"We Screwed Up Major"
CEO Hamilton McCubbin and the five trustees faced the crowd. They stood by the admission decision itself, explaining it conformed with established policies. They refused to rescind the offer to Kalani Rosell, saying that doing so would be unethical.
"To change the process midstream would be unfair and unworthy of the high moral character and integrity that Ke Alii Pauahi expected," the trustees later wrote.
But they acknowledged they had handled the communication poorly. Many in the Hawaiian community were upset at learning of the non-Hawaiian admission through the media rather than from Kamehameha leadership directly.
Then Trustee Nainoa Thompson spoke.
"I just want to say how sorry I am for hurting so many Hawaiians," Thompson told the Kapalama crowd. "We screwed up major."
That statement (that public apology) was significant. Even critics acknowledged it was "very important" for beginning a healing process. Observers noted that the previous board of trustees ousted in 1999 had never apologized to the Kamehameha ohana in that way.
The Petition: 7,000 Signatures in Two Weeks
Grassroots organizing began immediately. Within days of the announcement, activists on Maui (including Reverend Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr. and Dr. Jachowski) kicked off a petition drive.
Over two weeks, organizers gathered more than 7,000 signatures from Hawaii and the mainland, calling on trustees to "fix this admission policy to better reflect the intent of Princess Pauahi."
On July 25, 2002, about two dozen petitioners (including alumni, community elders, and children who had been denied admission to Kamehameha Maui) presented the petition to the board of trustees at Kamehameha's Honolulu headquarters.
It was an emotional meeting. There were "no loud voices" but "many of the children, the elders and the trustees [shed] tears" as they met face-to-face.
Petition leader Maile Jachowski told the board she had felt "shocked and betrayed" two weeks earlier, but now hoped this effort would "be a catalyst" for constructive change. Another organizer tearfully said, "we've come to mend."
The Legal Context Nobody Talked About Publicly
What wasn't being said loudly at these public meetings was that Kamehameha faced significant legal pressure.
Trustee Nainoa Thompson eventually explained: In the six years before 2002, eleven lawsuits had been filed challenging Kamehameha's Hawaiian-preference admissions policy. That compared to just three such suits in the previous 25 years.
The legal landscape was changing. In 2000, the Supreme Court had struck down Hawaiians-only voting for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees in Rice v. Cayetano. Other Hawaiian-preference programs were under legal attack.
Thompson warned that if Kamehameha were found to be violating non-discrimination laws, the IRS could potentially revoke its tax-exempt status (a move that might cost the trust around $1 billion in back taxes and consume 40% of its future income in taxes going forward).
"If the courts revoke the estate's tax-exempt status, [the trust] could end up paying 40% of its income in taxes, leaving less money to educate Native Hawaiian children," Thompson explained.
OHA trustee Clayton Hee summarized the dilemma: "So long as [Kamehameha] receives tax-exempt status from the IRS, any discriminatory policy vis-à-vis admissions needs to be changed. If you give up the IRS exemption, tuition will rise ten-fold. Can Hawaiians pick up that 10-fold increase? I doubt it."
This created an impossible tension: The community wanted Kamehameha to serve more Native Hawaiian students, not fewer. But legal constraints meant the school had to be careful about how explicitly it could favor Native Hawaiians in admissions.
The Promise: "We'll Work Together on This"
In response to the outcry, the trustees promised to re-examine Kamehameha's admission practices.
"If we have learned nothing else from this, it is that Hawaiians want us to educate more of Ke Alii Pauahi's children. We couldn't agree more," the board wrote in an open letter published in the Honolulu Advertiser on July 27, 2002.
They acknowledged that the Maui incident "brought the problems with the admissions process into sharp focus" and pledged to "carefully review our admissions process."
McCubbin announced trustees would hold community meetings statewide to gather input for policy changes. These meetings were scheduled across the islands (from Lanai and Molokai to Kauai and Hawaii island), specifically to discuss admissions criteria and how to "better meet the educational needs of our Hawaiian community."
August 10, 2002: The Policy Changes
One month after the controversy erupted, Kamehameha announced concrete changes.
On August 10, 2002, the trustees approved "interim admissions changes" for the upcoming 2003-04 admissions cycle, focused especially on the Maui and Big Island campuses where applicant pools were smaller.
1. Waiving Application Fees
Kamehameha normally charged a $25 application fee. Officials recognized this might discourage some Hawaiian families. For the Maui and Big Island campuses, all application fees were waived to encourage more Hawaiians to apply.
2. No Preliminary Screening
Previously, Kamehameha had used preliminary evaluation to screen out some applicants before the final round. For the neighbor island campuses, this preliminary screening was suspended for grades 1-10. All applications would go through the full review process.
3. Eliminating the Minimum Test Score
Since 1989, Kamehameha had required applicants to meet a minimum composite score on its admissions test to be considered "qualified."
McCubbin revealed that in the 2002 Maui case, eight Hawaiian applicants had been screened out in the early round, and four more Hawaiian students made it to final review but scored below the cutoff of 11.5 out of 25 points. It was only after those twelve Hawaiian applicants were removed for low scores that Kalani Rosell became the top remaining candidate.
Kamehameha suspended the minimum test-score threshold. Hawaiian applicants who previously might have been deemed "unqualified" due to test scores would now remain in the pool.
4. Expanding the Hawaiian Applicant Pool
The school took steps to increase the pool of Hawaiian applicants. Students from West Hawaii (previously eligible only for the Oahu campus) could now apply to the Hawaii (Hilo) campus as well. Kamehameha also began more aggressive outreach and recruitment, scheduling workshops to guide families through the admissions process.
5. Verifying Hawaiian Ancestry Earlier
The school created the Hooulu Hawaiian Data Center, a unit established to certify students' Hawaiian ancestry during the admissions process. Before 2002, Kamehameha did not verify ancestry until after a student was accepted. The data center would now ensure ancestry was confirmed upfront.
How SFFA Describes What Happened
The 2025 complaint from Students for Fair Admissions devotes several paragraphs to the 2002 incident. Here's how they characterize what happened:
The complaint states that one non-native student was admitted in 2002 "when, due to an 'unusually small applicant pool' for the Maui campus, a seat remained open after all native Hawaiians were admitted."
When this became public, the complaint says, "angry protests erupted." It quotes a trustee saying they had "screwed up major" and notes the board "stressed that this would not happen again."
The complaint then describes Kamehameha's response: "After these events, Kamehameha 'waived the application fee and the minimum-test-score requirement, effectively ensuring that there would never again be an insufficient number of qualified Native-Hawaiian applicants.'"
Today, the complaint concludes, "Kamehameha has not admitted a single non-native Hawaiian in at least 15 years."
SFFA uses this history to support their argument that Kamehameha's policy operates as what they call a "rigid, sequencing-based quota" rather than a genuine preference.
Two Ways to Understand What Happened
These policy changes can be interpreted in two very different ways, and both interpretations appear in the legal record:
One Perspective: Removing Barriers
Kamehameha removed arbitrary obstacles that were keeping qualified Native Hawaiian students out. Application fees burdened low-income families. Rigid test-score cutoffs excluded students who could succeed at Kamehameha but had one bad test day. By eliminating these barriers and expanding recruitment, Kamehameha made its admissions process more accessible to the Native Hawaiian community it was founded to serve. The changes ensured that Princess Pauahi's intended beneficiaries (Native Hawaiian children) would have maximum access to the educational opportunities she created for them.
Another Perspective: Engineering an Outcome
Kamehameha systematically removed any scenario where a non-Hawaiian might be admitted. By eliminating objective measures (test scores, fees, preliminary screening) and expanding recruitment, the school ensured there would always be enough Native Hawaiian applicants to fill every seat. The changes transformed what was described as a "preference" into something that operates as an absolute bar in practice (not because of the policy's language, but because of how the admissions process was restructured).
Both interpretations are based on the same documented facts. The difference lies in how you characterize Kamehameha's intent and the policy's effect.
The Result
These measures were initially adopted on an "interim" basis for one year. In practice, they became permanent features of Kamehameha's admissions process.
After 2002, Kamehameha did not knowingly admit any other non-Hawaiian child (except for one court-mandated case in 2003 involving a boy whose adoption complicated his ancestry claim, and who a court ultimately found to be Native Hawaiian).
As Trustee Connie Lau later stated: "We have no plans to admit another non-Hawaiian student."
How the Courts Saw It
The 2002 Maui admission figured prominently in later court proceedings about Kamehameha's admissions policy.
In 2003, a non-Hawaiian student sued Kamehameha under the pseudonym "John Doe," arguing that the Hawaiian-preference policy violated federal civil rights law. The case reached the Ninth Circuit, which upheld Kamehameha's policy 8-7 in 2006.
Both the majority and dissenting opinions discussed the 2002 incident (but drew opposite conclusions):
The Majority's View: The eight-judge majority noted that "from 1962 until 2002, Kamehameha admitted exactly one student who was not of Native Hawaiian descent." They cited this to show the policy was not an "absolute bar." In theory, a non-Hawaiian could be admitted if no Hawaiian applicants were available.
The Dissent's View: Judge Jay Bybee's dissent recounted the "firestorm of protests" and quoted Trustee Thompson's "we screwed up major" statement. The dissent argued that Kamehameha's subsequent policy changes (fee waivers, elimination of test scores, expanded recruitment) showed the school had restructured its admissions to ensure a non-Hawaiian would never be admitted again.
In a 2010 follow-up case, the Ninth Circuit noted that after the 2002 protests, Kamehameha "waived the application fee and the minimum-test-score requirement, effectively ensuring that there would never again be an insufficient number of qualified Native-Hawaiian applicants."
What This Tells Us About the 2025 Case
Understanding what happened in 2002 provides important context for the current Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit.
The facts are not in dispute: Kamehameha admitted one non-Hawaiian student in 2002, the Native Hawaiian community responded with passionate opposition, and Kamehameha subsequently changed its admissions policies in ways that made future non-Hawaiian admissions extremely unlikely.
What those facts mean, however, is contested:
SFFA will likely argue that the 2002 episode demonstrates Kamehameha's policy operates as a de facto absolute bar (not because of policy language, but because the school has the resources and will to ensure Native Hawaiian applicants always fill every seat). The community's reaction and the school's response, SFFA might contend, show that non-Hawaiian admission is treated as an unacceptable outcome to be prevented through policy restructuring.
Kamehameha will likely argue that the policy changes simply removed barriers that were keeping qualified Native Hawaiian students out. The school might contend that eliminating application fees and rigid test cutoffs made Kamehameha's admissions more equitable and accessible to the community it was founded to serve. The fact that Native Hawaiian applicants now consistently fill all available seats reflects successful outreach and the removal of artificial obstacles, not discriminatory exclusion.
The 2002 incident also helps explain why SFFA filed their constitutional notice just three days after filing the lawsuit, seeking immediate Department of Justice intervention. The documented backlash (600 angry alumni at a public meeting, 7,000 petition signatures, calls for resignations) provides factual support for why individual plaintiffs might reasonably fear applying or coming forward publicly.
Twenty-Three Years Later
Kalani Rosell's admission to Kamehameha Schools Maui was the result of a campus expansion and unusual circumstances. It became a turning point that forced difficult conversations about the school's mission and methods.
The controversy revealed genuine tensions within the Native Hawaiian community about how Kamehameha should fulfill Princess Pauahi's mandate. Should the school serve the highest-achieving Hawaiian students, or those who need educational support most? How should it balance its mission to Native Hawaiians with broader legal requirements? What does "preference" mean when you have the resources to ensure your preferred group always fills every seat?
The answers Kamehameha chose (waiving fees, dropping test requirements, expanding recruitment) can be viewed as either removing barriers to access or engineering a specific outcome, depending on your perspective.
What's undisputed is that those changes were effective. After 2002, the scenario that led to Kalani Rosell's admission hasn't repeated.
Whether that represents the successful fulfillment of a Native Hawaiian educational mission or the operation of an impermissible racial preference is precisely what the courts will need to decide in 2025 (just as they did in 2006).
As Trustee Nainoa Thompson said in July 2002: "We screwed up major."
What he meant by that statement (and what Kamehameha's response tells us about how the admissions policy actually works) remains central to understanding the legal challenge the school faces today.