For most students working their way through college, daily concerns are generally limited to classwork, extracurricular activities and relationships. The average student doesn’t have to worry about returning to society after months or years of military service.
The NC State Student Veteran Association aims to provide support and services for those coming back to school after service.
Several different types of veterans attend NC State according to Matthew Smith, the president of the NC State chapter of the SVA.
“Some are using GI benefits and others are not,” Smith said. “There is no ‘typical’ veteran student who comes back to school after serving. We’ve got everyone from graduate students, people who leave the service and come straight back to school and others that have been out of the service for years. Everyone has a different story. We have people in their 40s and people in their early 20s and every age in between.”
Smith himself has been out of the service since 2007 and has just returned to school this year. He said veterans often face difficulties when reintegrating back into civilian life.
“Serving in the military is very fraternal,” Smith said. “When you share an experience of combat or just general service, you make a lot of really close friends and you have a really strong feeling that you are accomplishing something for the greater good. It is often hard to find meaning once you get out of the service because you get used to always feeling like you are part of something much bigger than just yourself. Coming back, it’s often really hard to find that; that sense of camaraderie from going through something together is something very difficult to replicate.”
The SVA serves to let all veterans on campus know they have a support group. For example, the association can answer the “mind-boggling” questions veterans have dealing with veteran affairs organizations, government bureaucracy, GI Bill benefits and veteran’s healthcare issues, Smith said.
The main service of the SVA involves helping veterans navigate life after the service, filling out paperwork, and addressing all the twists and turns veterans face.
“We provide a good knowledge base and a good social outlet,” Smith said. “Integration is often difficult, and it’s easier to be surrounded with other veterans and people with similar experience. Most veterans these days have been to war.”
A lot of information and advice out there for the typical college student doesn’t really apply to veterans, so the SVA tries to provide relevant information to student veterans in order to help them get acclimated and provide a more comfortable environment, according to Smith.
“We try to work as a support network for each other, because we come from a different background than most students,” Smith said.
The SVA also provides a social outlet for student veterans. The group tries to get together as much as possible at events such as tailgates and Hurricane and Durham Bulls games, according to Smith.
Every year the SVA hosts a 5K run on Centennial Campus called the Run, Walk and Roll 5K. This year’s run will take place on Nov. 2, and all the proceeds go to the Canine Angels charity, which adopts dogs from shelters and trains them to be companion animals for disabled veterans.
According to Smith, the SVA strives to be a presence on campus, just to let the student body know veterans are here.
“There are actually quite a lot of us, if you look around your classroom and there are one or two people who have served,” Smith said. “With so many student veterans that have witnessed war, they just want to fit in. When you see that older guy in class, or the guy walking around with the camo backpack, just know they’ve been through some different and hard things, and they just want to get along and be part of things.”
