Increase in veterans means increase in services

Pitt’s veteran community is starting to organize itself as former U.S. armed forces servicemen… Pitt’s veteran community is starting to organize itself as former U.S. armed forces servicemen and women join the campus population in unprecedented numbers.

Since 2009, there has been a 108 percent increase in veteran student enrollment across all of Pitt’s campuses. With more than 500 veteran students on campus this semester, the Office of Veterans Services has expanded its services accordingly. The Veterans Student Association is also restarting its chapter on campus to bring veterans together.

William Cole was a Marine from 2001 to 2007. He served a tour in Iraq and the East African country of Djibouti and is currently in his first semester at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Cole is looking to expand the veterans community on campus by restarting Pitt’s Veterans Students Association. The group, which stopped being active after its previous president graduated a few years ago, is a student-run organization that focuses on activities and programs for veterans, ROTC and Army reserves on campus.

“What a veteran can do right now is go into the veterans office and get his GI Bill. We are looking to broaden that,” Cole said. “We are still in the incipient stage, so we are still getting the project tailored down.”

Cole said that the purpose of the VSA is to connect veterans with other veterans and provide a forum where they can discuss current issues.

When Cole attended the University of California at Santa Barbara as a undergraduate, the school had a veterans organization, and the people he met through the program made continuing his education easier. Cole hopes that he can bring this same sense of community back to Pitt.

“We exist in the general sense to be there for the veterans,” Cole said. “There are people who care out there.”

Sean Rohrer, an Army veteran and Federal Work-Study employee at the Office of Veterans Services, said the veteran community at Pitt helped make his transition from military to civilian life a little bit easier.

“Any veteran that I have ever met in class, we bond together to help each other out,” Rohrer said. “It’s very strange coming from this military mindset to class with 18- and 19-year-old kids whose parents do their laundry. It’s good to find people whom you can connect with.”

Ann M. Rairigh, the director of the Office of Veterans Services, said that the purpose of the office is to facilitate veteran students’ educations by providing them with information and support. One of the main functions of the office is to help veterans decide which GI Bill to use for school.

“It’s a very difficult process to choose benefits coming out of the military,” Rairigh said. “This is a really big decision — on which GI Bill to use — because they may qualify for more than one.”

The GI Bill is a sum of money that the U.S government grants to veterans that varies based on their military career. Veterans that have served at least 90 days of active duty service after Sept. 10, 2001, and received an honorable discharge will qualify for the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Depending on which GI Bill the veteran receives, the bill can be used to subsidize the costs of tuition, housing and books.

Dennis J. Renner, the Veterans Services’ benefits coordinator, served three tours of duty in Iraq during his 26-year career in the Army. After he retired in 2009, Renner came to Pitt to help streamline students’ GI Bill paperwork.

“If you didn’t have a knowledge of the benefits, it could be very confusing,” Renner said. “We don’t expect the students to know all of those things.”

In 2009, the office didn’t host any programs, and its sole purpose was to process GI Bill student benefits. But this semester, the group is holding multiple workshops, such as “Post 9/11 GI Bill Changes”, “Military to Civilian Resume” and “Ten Steps to a Federal Job.”

Over the summer, various changes to the Post 9/11 GI Bill came into effect. These changes include capping the amount of tuition a veteran can use for private or foreign schools and allowing reimbursement for certain national entrance exams like the SAT and the ACT.  

Rohrer attended the “Post 9/11 GI Bill Changes” workshop, which, to him, functioned as a new student orientation.

He said that the workshop not only discussed the changes made during the summer to the GI Bill, but also provided attendees with a packet of information covering topics such as parking, the libraries, FAFSA and various resources available to veterans on campus.

In addition, the office hosted the “Boots-to-Business” workshop, which allowed veterans to meet with a recruiter from Bank of New York Mellon to discuss possible job opportunities, internships and resumes.

Jamie Daubenspeck, a former Marine and a current economics and mathematics undergraduate student, said that he attended the “Boots-to-Business” workshop and received advice on how to tailor his resume for a civilian job.

“It was an opportunity to talk to [the recruiter] and utilize her as a resource,” Daubenspeck said.

He said that when he first arrived on campus, he only had to spend 10 minutes to get the paperwork filed. The office also requires veterans to stop by before every semester to drop off course schedules, and Daubenspeck said that also took him 10 minutes.  

“I deal with [the Office of Veterans Services] as little as possible, which is great,” Daubenspeck said. “It’s been the smoothest thing in the world.”