Veteran student group keeps camaraderie strong

To an outsider, a gathering of the Student Veterans Association at Pitt sounds like a meeting of…To an outsider, a gathering of the Student Veterans Association at Pitt sounds like a meeting of people speaking a foreign language filled with acronyms, numbers and far-off places.

But this club provides veterans at Pitt a chance to get to know people like them — people who also speak their language.

The group, also known as Pitt Vets, reconvenes at Pitt this year for the first time since 2007. William Cole, president and founder of Pitt Vets, said the club has two main purposes: to educate the public and advocate veterans issues on campus and to provide a venue for veterans to meet with other veterans.

Pitt Vets’ second meeting of the year was held over beer and pizza at Mario’s East Side Saloon in Shadyside last Thursday. Many of the members, who are all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said that good company was what they appreciated most about the newly re-organized group.

On the night of the event, 15 vets and two ROTC members gathered around a shuffleboard table. They immediately started comfortable, if incomprehensible, conversations. It was as if they’d known each other for years. This is a hallmark of military relationships.

“Vets need to know how to get to know each other quick … you’ve got to know who you’re dealing with if you’re going to be in a firefight with someone,” said Matt Hannan, a 15-year veteran of the Marine Corps and business manager of Pitt Vets.

But whereas military relationships might come easy, some returning vets have trouble re-adjusting to life outside the service.

Jake Jager, a computer science major who spent four years as a helicopter electrician in the Navy, said it can be challenging for veterans to make friends on campus because of the significant age and experience gap between themselves and other students. Many of the vets who attended the meeting at Mario’s ranged in age from their late 20s to their late 30s and tend to feel a lot older when hanging around the average college student.

“It’s hard for me to go out and meet people,” said Justin Bodamer, a junior who did five years in the airborne infantry. For him, Pitt Vets provides “a good place to get advice and help and, of course, make friends.”

This kind of support system is especially important to vets.

According to Cole, the military is like a big family. It’s one of the strongest networks someone can have, and when a veteran leaves that support system to re-enter society, it can be a culture shock.

When Cole worked on his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the school had an active veterans group and a class focused on helping veterans transition back to civilian life.

“It really helped integrate into academic life,” Cole said.

But when he came to Pitt for grad school last year, he was dismayed to find that no such organization existed here. One had been tried in 2006, but it petered out after a year and left Pitt with no official veterans support group.

So Cole began to work with other vets, including Dr. Rory Cooper, the group’s faculty advisor, and Hannan, to set up Pitt Vets. The group had a few meetings at the end of last year and expects to get into full swing this semester.

According to Hannan, a group like Pitt Vets not only helps soldiers re-integrate into civil society, but also helps them battle any lingering effects of combat.

In reference to post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, common mental stresses for soldiers, Hannan said that on one’s own, “things can get ugly real quick, but having people around who understand what you went through is better than any counseling or prescription a doctor could give you.”

Hannan also said that Pitt Vets is especially helpful in this regard because, as opposed to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other veterans associations he belongs to, all the members of Pitt Vets are about the same age and were in the same fight.

Pitt Vets also endeavors to become a voice for student veterans on issues that affect them. Cole mentioned a desire to see the University institute priority registration for veterans, and Dave Coogan, the club’s vice president who spent five years as an intelligence officer in the Marines, said he would like to use the group as a mouthpiece to bring attention to the fact that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is late on its GI Bill payments this year.

But without specific plans to tackle these issues, it’s apparent that the nascent organization is still trying to get its feet in the political arena.

“We’re a new group still finding out what the issues are,” Coogan said.

Some members also hope that the group will make the presence of veterans more visible for other students at Pitt. According to Pitt’s Office of Veterans Services, there are 521 registered veterans at Pitt, which makes up about 2 percent of the undergraduate student body.

“We are one of the most invisible minorities on campus,” said Marco Attisano, Pitt Vets director of policy and government affairs.

Attisano said that because all fighting was voluntary in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, he believes that much of the population is culturally removed from those two wars and the people they affected.

“If the group becomes visible on campus, it could make a lot of students stop and think,” Attisano said.

The members of Pitt Vets have grand plans, but they seem content meeting in a bar drinking beers, eating pizza and talking about old times — for now.

“I hope it stays a bunch of vets getting together, talking to each other and getting to know each other,” Attisano said loudly over the crowd as he refilled his beer at Mario’s. “Whatever this group becomes, I hope this stays.”