LAWRENCE — Tweesna Mills couldn’t believe the news when she heard the University of Kansas would seek to cut over 400 graduate teaching assistantships like the one she held in the university’s film and media studies department. The third-year graduate student from the Eastern Shoshone-Yakama-Umatilla Nations had received a tribal scholarship for her first master's degree, but her second one required her to work through some of it as a graduate teaching assistant, helping the department’s professors with sections of classes and grading. So when she heard the news that KU planned to cut 40% of GTA positions, her initial thought was denial.