Developing a Student Veterans Center: The Confluence of Academic and Military Cultures

Abstract

THREE YEARS AGO, A GROUP OF US AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA began to develop a comprehensive program to serve veterans who would be returning to our campus from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. We wanted to move from just meeting basic funding needs through GI Bill certification to a robust initiative that would address veterans’ transitioning into higher education.

Like at so many universities, few of our staff and faculty are veterans, and even fewer are veterans from current conflicts. We surveyed student and employee veterans to understand their experiences on our very traditional campus. The results emphasized the non-traditional experiences of this population. Many of the veterans were married and had families, would not seek out the typical student activities of traditional-aged students, were independently financing their education (many through the GI Bill), and were generally unfamiliar with what campus life had to offer. We learned from the survey that these factors often lead to a sense of isolation from the rest of the college-going population and create barriers to higher education. We hoped to address these barriers through our programming and increase the number of veterans who enroll in school and complete their education.

While student veterans share characteristics with other student populations, they also bring to our campuses a host of unique gifts and challenges whose impact can be profound, not only on the vets themselves but also on the institution and the individuals who work with them. Therefore, college professionals should proceed with humility and caution as they develop programming for veterans. This article shares aspects of our education as nonveterans as we have worked to create campus programs and services for student veterans. Rather than providing answers, we share our questions and perceptions as we continue to learn about student veteran identity, community, and culture.

Are Veterans like other Identity Groups?

WHEN WE FIRST BEGAN TO ENVISION A “VET-FRIENDLY CAMPUS,” a tension arose for us around how to consider a group of majority white, male heterosexuals as members of a subordinated identity group. While the students often acted out the privileges of these identities, their status as veterans revealed many of the same challenges of other historically marginalized populations around access, oppression, power, and identity. For example, despite the educational benefits service members earn, low rates of veterans fully utilize their GI Bill benefits. Furthermore, veterans access and persist in college at lower rates than their nonveteran counterparts, and they can encounter social dynamics on campus that are shaped by bias and stereotypes. We drew upon familiar practices that we had used with other underrepresented populations: we procured a space, hired an advisor, initiated a club, and generated a programming budget. But as we continued to work with student vets, we found that this model was not necessarily appropriate. We began to appreciate that these students did not necessarily consider themselves “minorities” or want to be perceived as such. Actually, veterans tell us that “Veteran” is their primary identity, exclusionary of race, gender, or disability. We came to appreciate that each individual experiences a process that may include moving through several identities, from civilian to service member to veteran, and for some, disabled veteran. In our work, the salient identity is now student veteran.

How Does Veterans’ Sense of Community Shape Their Perceptions of Themselves and Others on Campus?

AS WE BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MORE STUDENT VETERANS, we also started to understand just how strong the sense of veteran identity is. Being a vet can literally impact where one lives, works, shops, sends children to school, and seeks medical care. One student vet told us that he had just purchased a used car “sight unseen” because it was being sold by another vet. The desire to replicate this community on campus was a strong theme found in the results of our initial survey. When asked what the university could do to be more “vet-friendly,” the majority of respondents recommended the opening of a specific student center where veterans could be among those who understood each other's experiences. One of the most salient of those experiences is that of having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whose symptoms are often exacerbated by everyday experiences on campus.

Today, the Student Veterans Center serves many functions—refuge, resource center, study space, game room, and place for organizing. The student vets designed this space and essentially created for themselves a home away from home. Truthfully, we were unprepared for the clubhouse environment that students created, and we found ourselves dealing with language and behavior common in military environments, but typically inappropriate for a college center. This has sometimes led to conflicts between male and female vets and between student vets with other student communities. We had to ask ourselves about what we were willing to tolerate in a space that we knew was transitional in nature, and that was so important to many of the vets as they were just coming to campus.

How Do Veteran and Higher Education Cultures Interact?

VETERANS ARE ADULTS WHO HAVE ALREADY HAD INTENSE JOBS with high stress and responsibility; however, on a traditional campus, they can be relegated to freshman and/or work-study status. While some hope to experience the college lifestyle they feel they missed when they enlisted after high school, for the vast majority of them programs like freshman orientation, Greek life, and residence life are irrelevant. Furthermore, the GI Bill has strictures that cause them to move through their programs with greater speed and deliberateness than traditional students. Understandably, student vets resent being treated like every other student.

We have also experienced clashes between veterans and the university's administrative culture. As the veterans on our campus began to find a common voice, their discontent with university processes and procedures grew. Eager to find opportunities to exercise their considerable leadership skills on campus, some decided to champion causes to support their campus peers. And while these leaders may have been extremely competent in their military roles, they arrived on campus very unfamiliar with the culture of higher education. One example on our campus was priority registration for GI Bill users. When vets began to advocate for this priority, there was general administrative support; however, we expected this policy to move through traditional university channels, which included a long vetting process prior to a vote by the faculty senate. Despite our support of the policy change, many vet leaders reacted vehemently that the changes were not happening fast enough and blamed the university for a lack of urgency and commitment to veterans’ needs. From this incident, we learned that veterans have been trained to fight for justice and equity, and they are accustomed to completing their missions quickly. So, the glacial pace of the university is extremely frustrating. Eventually, we were able to get priority registration in what we considered record time and realized that the university, at times, could respond more flexibly and adeptly to achieve a goal.

The priority registration incident reflects a greater recurrent theme. Many of the very administrators who had championed the creation of our veteran initiatives found themselves unwittingly positioned as the enemy. We found ourselves perplexed as issues that seemed easily handled became points of contention. We were shocked and hurt by what came to be seen as a battle with the administration. But we also learned a lesson that has continually helped us to understand the thinking of some student veterans: many of them had come from a hostile environment that assumed an enemy. Lacking that common enemy at the university, some vet leaders treated the administration as such. They could be uncomfortable with the idea of collaboration with us, and our often amorphous leadership structures, and were mistrustful of our intentions. They saw issues in black and white in an environment of gray and sought hierarchy and clear authority structures in a collegial and collaborative setting.

There were times when to overcompensate for the lack of fit our organizational structure provided, we invited student veterans to every meeting, ran every decision by them for approval, and referred to them consistently as colleagues, never students. The vets even appropriated the disability rights credo “nothing about us without us” to describe their insistence that they be involved in every aspect of decision making regarding vets. This dynamic was equally inappropriate, for it discounted our roles, responsibilities, and expertise as higher education professionals and the fact that accountability for decisions always ultimately rested with the professional staff.

Lessons Learned

THREE YEARS LATER, WE HAVE LEARNED some unexpected lessons that help us to work more successfully and knowledgeably with veterans and have expanded our skill set as academic professionals.

Vet Glamour

WE WERE SURPRISED TO FIND HOW MANY campus and community members felt a desire to “give back” to the student veterans. Many donated small and large items to the center. Community members demonstrated an ownership of veterans, unlike for other populations. They referred to them as “our vets” and wanted an opportunity to support them and be near them as if they were celebrities. This community response, along with a barrage of media coverage and ties to state representatives, senators, federal grants, and so on reinforced the idea to the student vets and to the campus that veterans are a high-profile group, different from their undergraduate counterparts on campus. While this type of attention certainly helps to raise awareness, and institute new policies and practice expeditiously, the “glamour” that we observe can also contribute to the idea that student veterans should not be subjected to university protocol, thereby complicating power dynamics and program development.

Trust and Communication

NO FORWARD MOVEMENT WOULD OCCUR without first building trust. While this may seem obvious, it is especially vital in working with vets. The relationship between student vets and university administration can reveal a cultural divide, with neither “side” truly understanding the vast experience of the other. When student veterans feel as though they are being treated unfairly, or do not have all the information, their allegiance is to one another. The challenge has been to be forthcoming with information, approach situations as a team, and make decisions that would meet the needs of vets and the university, within constraints like time, budget, and space. Building trust and rapport requires constant communication and validation of all perspectives, following through on commitments, and advocating for vets whenever possible. Open communication will help build trust and educate vets on our professional roles in higher education. In turn, this type of fluid communication helps administrators more authentically understand the perspectives of student veterans.

Don't Take it Personally

FOR MANY OF THE REASONS TOUCHED UPON in this article, working with some student veterans may prove challenging. It is good practice to take a step back for perspective. Student veterans arrive on college campuses in the midst of much transition. As they deal with these transitions, they may appear raw, volatile, or angry. And, in reality, many are. PTSD may exacerbate these emotions and complicate interactions. Appreciating the complexities of student veterans’ experiences can help mitigate unnecessary professional stress and burnout. Indeed, as many of the staff who initially helped create our vets initiative moved away from this work after a few years, we became more aware of what counselors call “compassionate fatigue,” a sense of burnout that leads to a negative attitude regarding sensitive and emotionally taxing work.

Conclusion

STUDENT VETERANS MUST ADJUST NOT ONLY to the civilian world, but also to the very unique world of higher education. At the same time, college faculty, staff, and administrators must develop our own competencies as we prepare to interact with them. Those who work most closely with veterans can expect a broad range of experiences and emotions and, like us, will constantly be managing a learning curve.

Not surprisingly, many of our university's student veterans have gone on to become some of our strongest campus leaders. They engage in public and community service at a high level, and their ability to get the job done sometimes reveals that we can move more quickly as an institution. While their leadership skills may have been developed on the battlefield, the campus is a place where those skills can be honed for leadership in the civilian world. As with veterans of previous generations, we can expect that we are training the higher education, business, government, and community leaders of the future. So we have spent time ensuring that leaders have SafeZone training, interact with our women's and cultural centers, and engage in the student club officer training to become familiar with university policies. These experiences help blur the boundaries between veteran and non-veteran communities and help to build cross-cultural relationships that benefit all groups. Non-veteran students and administrators must cultivate their understanding of the veteran community. In fact, our position as outsiders to the veteran community is a dynamic with which we consistently grapple. We must ask ourselves about authenticity and permission. To negotiate such political issues, we must consider not only identity, but also the boundaries of identity groups. How can someone external to a certain group truly advocate for that group? We have often asked ourselves these questions when working with other identity groups, and now we must ask the same when working with vets. As we continue the conversation on equity in higher education, we must continue to explore our boundaries and our positionality to more effectively and authentically connect not only with the student veteran population, but with all student groups.

As many institutions of higher education plan or even scramble to develop programs and services for student veterans, we offer these reflections as a way to connect with what may be common challenges. We recognize that the experiences we discuss in this essay do not characterize all student veterans; moreover, we share our observations and questions with you in an effort to analyze our own practice. We believe these situations yield implications for our interactions with multiple student populations and may help us critically assess our traditional attitudes, policies, and procedures.