Many of the nation’s 2.8 million veterans who served after 9/11— including 40 percent who saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan—have higher education. Thanks in part to the enhanced Post-9/11 GI Bill, the ranks of veterans on college campuses across the United States, including AU, are swelling to record numbers (1.1 million at latest count). Vets who trade their rucksacks for backpacks bring to the classroom unique perspectives and challenges. In many cases, they’ve experienced more violence, tragedy, and loss—both on the battlefield and on the home front—by their 21st birthday than most people see in a lifetime. And while their high-and-tights or the straight and tall way in which they walk across campus might betray their former lives, student veterans share one thing in common with their traditional classmates: the hope, the belief, that a college degree will better their future. These are a few of AU’s veterans’ stories. BY MIKE UNGER 22 AMERICAN MAGAZINE MARCH <strong>2015</strong>
It’s reasonable to assume that few—if any— of Matthew Hawkland’s classmates, many of whom aren’t old enough to legally buy a Budweiser, have experienced a day like the one the 29-year-old is recounting in chilling detail. As we sit on stone benches in the courtyard outside Asbury Hall on a pleasant mid- November day, his mind is transported back to Afghanistan, where he served three tours in the infantry. The School of International Service undergraduate does not strain to conjure minutiae—whether he likes it or not, hardly a day elapses without memories of combat and the friends he fought alongside inhabiting his brain. “I watched my mentor take a shit-ton of shrapnel to his face and body,” he says, his voice as calm as the leaves rustling around us. “I watched my private die. We were in a firefight for 45 minutes. That was the one time in my life when I was like, ‘I’m probably going to die tonight. That’s cool.’ I came back inside the wire and I just started crying.” Hawkland’s one of the lucky ones. He made it home alive, his body and mind intact. He doesn’t consider the unease he occasionally feels among big groups of people or his jumpiness at loud noises (twoby-fours clapping together sound an awful lot like rifle rounds passing overhead, he says) symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a psychological condition many veterans consider serious yet often unfairly branded upon all of them. Rather, Hawkland believes these behaviors are just a part of his personality now, the fabric of his new normal. As America’s longest-ever foreign war winds down in Afghanistan, institutes of higher learning are increasingly populated by veterans. Like all students on campus, who range from slackers to studious, veterans are not a homogenous bunch. Some, like Hawkland, flew halfway around the world, taking the fight to the enemy. Others carried out their service stateside from behind a desk. Still, they all bring backgrounds and experiences that differ from those of the traditional student. Approximately 1.1 million veterans attended colleges in 2013, according to Student Veterans of America. (About 16 percent of those went to a private school.) At <strong>American</strong> University, 328 veterans and their spouses or dependents were certified for benefits for the fall semester under the Post-9/11 GI Bill (a 2008 law that provides enhanced education benefits for service members who have served on active duty for 90 or more days since September 10, 2001), up from 223 in 2012. Overall, AU has seen a 175 percent increase in veteran enrollment in the past five years. A desire to smooth their transition to scholastic life led AU to create its Veterans Liaison Network, a collection of staff from the counseling and career centers, academic advising, admissions, and students from AU Vets. “The cultures in the military and on college campuses are very different,” says Jeanne Piette, assistant director for training at the counseling center. “There are also developmental differences. A number of I can’t tell you “ how many times I’ve watched walls explode with AK-47 fire. One of my soldiers died, two of them lost legs. The only people you can really talk about [this stuff] with are people who share your own experience. —Matthew Hawkland ” veterans coming to campus will already have a life partner or kids, which is really different from an 18-year-old. Sometimes finding connections to people on campus can be a little bit challenging.” That, in part, sparked AU to open a lounge specifically for veterans in Asbury Hall. It’s where Hawkland, SIS/BA ’16, who’s the president of AU Vets, spends a lot of time. “I’ve stepped over three IEDs, I’ve had six RPGs shot at me,” says the former staff sergeant, who left active duty in 2013. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched walls explode with AK-47 fire. One of my soldiers died, two of them lost legs. The only people you can really talk about [this stuff ] with are people who share your own experience. You tell some of these 18-year-olds about some of the things I’ve seen and done, they can’t comprehend it.” The tears he shed that fateful day were his last in Afghanistan. “My platoon sergeant slapped me straight across my face and pushed me up against a wall and said, ‘You better man up. You have a responsibility. They see you like that, what’s that gonna do to everybody else?’” he recalls. “You have to internalize everything because it can affect your soldiers.” More than 16 million <strong>American</strong>s served in the military during World War II, and most were greeted as heroes upon their return home. But in the 1940s and ’50s, many of the transitional issues that are openly discussed now were ignored publicly, which is not to say that veterans then didn’t face some of the same challenges their contemporary counterparts do today. “One didn’t hear about a suicide problem. That doesn’t mean it didn’t occur, but there’s no evidence that there were a lot of suicides after the war,” says AU history professor Alan Kraut. “Remember, the ability to save lives during the Second World War was not as great as it is today. Many of the people who are returning without limbs today would have simply died in the Second World War.” Vietnam veterans came back from their tours to an often hostile homeland. Many left the military with drug habits they didn’t have going in, which may have been their way of coping with PTSD, a term that hadn’t yet entered the mainstream lexicon. Almost 31 percent of Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD, according to Department of Veterans Affairs estimates. After Vietnam the draft was abolished, and today’s all-volunteer force has more soldiers, seamen, marines, and airmen who enter the armed services having never established a career path. Unlike veterans from previous wars, many either have no vocation to return to or find their skills don’t transfer to the civilian world when they leave the military. For some that can lead to difficulties when they enter the crowded workforce. “In the case of most soldiers who are coming out at 22 or 25 or somewhere in that area, they have never held a civilian job FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 23
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