Dear Editor,
My name is Katie Hruska and I am a Barton County Community College alumni and former employee. I attended BCCC and was a member of the dance team from 1999-2001. I was the assistant dance coach under Debbie Warren from 2004-2006. I know Debbie on many different levels including coach, boss, role model, and friend. Debbie taught me countless lessons through my two stints at BCCC, but one sticks out above all others. Honesty is the best key to any relationship.
With this being said I am going to take this opportunity to be very honest. Debbie Warren has dedicated herself to the cheer and dance programs at BCCC for 27 years. During this time she had positively affected numerous lives. Debbie teaches her students that with hard work and dedication anything can be accomplished. Lessons of responsibility, loyalty, punctuality, empathy, pride, teamwork, listening, and caring are all things that each student walks away from the spring floor of the Kirkman with. These lessons are not things that you learn in a day, they are engrained in you through example. Debbie is this example to all of her past and current students.
In addition to my two wonderful years of attending and dancing at BCCC, I was lucky enough to be Debbie’s assistant for two years. If I thought I learned a lot as one of Debbie’s students, being her assistant loaded my life’s tool belt with a whole new set of tools. Professionalism, problem solving, organization, hard work, balance, compassion, believing, and standing up for myself where all things Debbie taught me while working for her. Once again, it was through Debbie’s actions and conduct that these lessons were learned.
Debbie Warren is Barton County Community College. Without her dedication over the past 27 years the college would not be as successful or as widely known as it is today. In most colleges and communities someone like Debbie would be celebrated and savored not scrutinized and fired. The recent unjust action Debbie has endured leaves me confused. That the college that I have loved and promoted for the past 11 years could treat one of their own with such disrespect and distaste is beyond my thinking. Barton County Community College is better than this. 
Right the wrong.
Katie Hruska,
St John, Virgin Islands