Summer 2011 - University of Massachusetts Lowell

F E A T U R E S T O R Y
“IT HAS BEEN
FINDING OTHER
VETERANS ON
CAMPUS, BEING
ABLE TO TALK
TO THEM AND
SPEND TIME
WITH THEM,
THAT HAS MADE
THE LARGEST
DIFFERENCE
FOR ME.”
— DAVID BOYD
UMass Lowell’s Air force ROTC gather on North Campus.
used to discourage its people from revealing their
problems; partly because of this, many of them are
still reluctant to do so. Now though, with the new
center, they’ll have a place they can come to talk with
others who are dealing with [similar issues]. They’ll no
longer have to face them alone.”
All this is recent history. Only five years ago, a veteran
on campus was as likely as anyone else to get lost in the
shuffle: typed as a “non-traditional student” or “adult
learner,” and grouped with the hundreds of others over
25 years old returning to school after working, having
children or otherwise taking time off schooling.
Then one day, at a luncheon for such students in the
spring of 2006, one of these “non-traditionals” – a young
woman, a former medic in Iraq – approached Imogene
Stulken, the University’s Protestant campus minister. It
was this brief exchange, between the student and the
minister, that would plant the seeds for today’s SVO.
Stulken would recall later that the woman had said,
“ I’m not finding much in common with my classmates. I
didn’t know when I went to sleep whether or not I would
wake up in the morning. I can’t relate to classmates who
are worrying about what clothes to wear or what party to
attend.”
From there, one thing led to another. Stulken spoke
with Mary Connelly in the Dean of Students Office, who
referred her to another UMass Lowell veteran interested
in forming an organization on campus. Sometime after,
in the course of working with still other vets to prepare
boxes for soldiers and sailors posted overseas, she learned
more of the needs and wants of these particular “non-traditional”
men and women.
And so it happened, as Stulken would relate it all later
– at a celebration for campus veterans in the spring of last
year: “From one person sharing her story, to one person
hearing then retelling that story, to that one listener’s remembering
the story and sharing it with one other student,
to dedicated students responding one by one – from Brian
to Michael to Ted to David, and to many more – a community
was formed.”
It couldn’t have been more timely. Within just two
years of the 2006 luncheon exchange that gave birth to
the SVO, an epochal piece of national legislation – the
Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 –
had made its way through Congress. Often compared to
the original GI Bill that followed World War II, it took
effect in the fall of 2009, greatly expanding educational
assistance for recent active-duty veterans and resulting in
an overnight cascade of new enrollments – a one-year,
forty percent increase in the number of UMass Lowell
students receiving military benefits.
The University, in a host of ways, has risen to meet
the challenge. The Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs,
headed by Vice Provost Charlotte Mandell, is now
in place to raise awareness of veterans on campus and
address their issues and concerns; a therapist at the Lowell
Vets Center now spends her Thursday mornings at the
University’s counseling center to be available to student
veterans; the office of the Veterans Benefits Coordinator,
Linda Morabito, has expanded its reach and staffing.
UMass Lowell now has a web page exclusively for student
veterans; it hosts a welcome luncheon for incoming
veterans in September, and another one two months
later on the day before Veterans Day.
And then last spring, in a first-ever ceremony, the
University hosted a reception to honor its graduating
veterans – conferring on each one a “challenge coin,” inspired
by a World War I battlefield tradition, to symbolize
lifetime membership in the University community. At
the same ceremony, joining their graduating colleagues,
UMass Lowell’s inaugural-year inductees to the SALUTE
Veterans National Honor Society were honored for their
achievements. UMass Lowell is a charter member of
SALUTE, one of only five in the country. The students
honored are eligible to apply for national scholarships
that supplement the new GI-Bill funding — or in some
cases, are awarded to students not receiving GI-Bill
benefits.
David Boyd, as SVO president, has been an advocate
for much of this – and is happy, he says, with the progress
made on his watch. Still, like any good soldier-leader, he
has one eye out for the unmet challenges:
“There are still certain buildings that [some] physically
disabled veterans wouldn’t be able to attend classes in.
There are issues and services that certain veterans need
because of their [disabilities], such as PTSD, that the
University – whether staff, faculty, or students – isn’t yet
ready to deal with. And there are some professors [who]
still let their personal biases and political beliefs affect
how they treat and grade their veteran-[students].”
But these are battles for another day. And the biggest
battle of all, says Boyd, as he heads into the final half of
his senior year, appears already to have been won:
“It has been finding other veterans on campus, being
able to talk to them and spend time with them, that has
made the largest difference for me.”
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