Vowing to better serve veterans

University President Wallace Loh signed a pact with other higher education administrators and the state government yesterday aimed at ensuring the success of students who return to school after serving in the military.

The Maryland State Compact for Student Veterans, drafted by Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, calls attention to the unique challenges often faced by student veterans and outlines provisions for state institutions to make their campuses more accommodating to them.

Provisions in the document include creating a centralized center for student veteran support services, raising campus awareness of the challenges student veterans face, training faculty and staff to recognize these challenges and promoting peer support groups for veteran students.

"I think we have a sacred obligation to the men and women who served in uniformed service," Brown said. "When they return home from service whether in wartime or not, we have a responsibility to reintegrate them into the community, including the school community."

Stamp Student Union Director Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, who has been involved in veteran affairs at this university, said much of the compact reflects efforts that have already been in practice at this university.

Just this past October, the university was named one of the nation's 15 model institutions for veteran affairs by the U.S. Department of Education and received a federal grant of $400,000 to create a new Center of Excellence for Veteran Student Success, the work for which is now underway.

"It reinforces the kind of work we're already doing," Guenzler-Stevens said. "We've had a commitment to students, and now we have a commitment to the federal government to deliver."

Brown recognized the strides already taken by this university and other state colleges but said that having college presidents sign this compact was taking progress a necessary step forward.

"What we found was that some campuses don't have something and that all campuses can do more," he said.

University System of Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan, who was present for the signing, said the agreement truly brought the needs of student veterans to the forefront and provided an effective template for other colleges to follow in addressing those needs.

"I think this is really a huge step in making our institutions very much more veteran friendly," Kirwan said. "It's a way of having a comprehensive list of supports and mechanisms that I think really are the best practices."

During the signing, Loh introduced one of the university's own student veterans to speak before a crowd of about three dozen state and university officials, service men and women and reporters who had gathered in Annapolis to watch the signing.

Matthew Marsh, a veteran who served in Iraq before coming to this university to study mechanical engineering, said in an interview after the event that he spoke of the challenges he faced upon returning from his tour abroad and joining the ranks of students at this university.

"When I first came in after I got home from Iraq, there was nothing really," Marsh said. "I had to find everything myself; there was a whole lot of red tape I needed to cut through. The university was not very helpful with helping me find the right people. So in the last three years I've been here, it's gotten a lot better, but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done."

He said it is imperative for state colleges to recognize and address these issues for future student veterans.

Marsh said while he thought the signing of a compact was a good indicator that the university and state government cared about these issues, actions speak louder than words.

"My concern is that it's not like a bill or law," Marsh said. "You can sign it, but there's no guarantee that they will follow through on what they promised to do."

Brown said as a follow-up to the signing, state officials will develop a "menu of best practices" for ensuring the compact's provisions are followed, but it will be up to each individual school to decide for itself how to fulfill the conditions outlined by the compact and provide the best support to their student veterans.

"We fail our veterans when we ignore their unique issues and needs," Brown said. "But this is a case where we step up and say we're doing the right thing in this case."

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