Five years later: servicemen and women grow in campus population

Five years after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell in Baghdad, the University of Massachusetts is still adjusting to the influx of student soldiers and veterans on campus. For Jon Zagami, who served with the United States Army Engineering Corps in Iraq, the University was largely unprepared to handle a population of veterans and servicemen and women when he arrived as a freshman at UMass four years ago. "It's now okay and acceptable to be known as a veteran on campus," he said. "When I first showed up on the scene four years ago it felt like it wasn't very welcoming. It seemed like this place was open to every kind of idea and every sort of ideal that anyone had, but being in the military wasn't positive and there was this negative connotation associated with it." A founding member of the Veterans and Service Members Association (VASMA), Zagami said the University has come a long way towards assisting and accommodating the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to receive an education. "In terms of Massachusetts, UMass is the best place for [veterans] to go to use their benefits. You're going to get a great education for the least cost and the program we have here is astounding," he said. "That's why this is a great place." Over the course of the past five years the University has adopted health service programs tailored for student veterans, trained resident directors and assistants to recognized the needs of students who have served overseas, and extended waivers to veterans enrolling through the Internet on UMassOnline, according to Zagami. The changes have come as the numbers of veterans on campus increase, Zagami said. His group has grown to 63 members with five officers, still only a fraction of the almost 244 veterans currently enrolled on campus. Assistant Dean of Students Eileen Stewart oversees the Veterans Affairs office on campus, assisting students in receiving their G.I. Bill benefits and helping to facilitate military withdrawals if an enrolled student is deployed or called up. She described the services offered by both the state and the University for veterans as an arc, waxing and waning throughout the history of the campus, from the Second World War to the conflict in Iraq. "Now that there's more emphasis on the military and that people are being called up and being taken out of school and then come back, I think that the perceived need for students is rising again," she said. According to Stewart, both the University and the Commonwealth have taken steps to assist veterans seeking higher education in Massachusetts. The state legislature granted national guardsmen both free tuition and fees for state schools a little over a year and a half ago, and the Board of Trustees has waived tuition costs for graduate student veterans. Stewart said the University had addressed veterans' concerns at an administrative level as well, holding meetings to bring together different departments to find the best-suited ways to aid students returning from either a military background or overseas deployment. "We've had a number of meetings with offices to talk about some stresses and strains that folks who are coming back - particularly folks who are coming back from overseas - may be experiencing," she said. "It would be the Registrar's office, financial aid office, Bursar's office and staff talking about this and trying to work through some of the issues that might be coming up so they can catch them right away." Stewart pointed to the recent creation of the Military Community Resource Center, located in Wilder Hall, as a way for the University to work with servicemen and women and provide support and services for veterans them and their families. "Dean Eileen Stewart certifies all the G.I. Bill and education payments and she does a great job at it," Zagami said. "It's just that with the amount of veterans that have come in and the amount of work she's had, it hasn't been possible to answer the one on one questions. This new office is there as a resources for students to go to." According to Stewart, VASMA was behind the push for a resource center for servicemen and women on campus. Lieutenant Colonel David T. Vacchi, a member of the faculty and Battalion Commander of the UMass ROTC, calls himself the "informal advisor" of VASMA. "With regard to the creation of the program, I wouldn't say that I was an initial advisor to it, but I was here as the group was being created and I worked with Jon Schnauber and Jon Zagami quite a bit," he said. "They did all the leg work and they deserve all the credit for creating that group." Vacchi said the ROTC program at UMass crosses paths with campus veterans in community service, taking care of area veterans and observing holidays like Veterans Day in conjunction with groups like VASMA. "Since they're all students they take a lot of the same classes. They see each other at the VFW for karaoke night on Saturday, typically," he said. "Last fall we had a speaker from VASMA, which was quite good." A veteran of the Iraq War as well, Vacchi has incorporated his experiences serving abroad into the University, from teaching a course on the history and culture of Iraq to ROTC training. "We used to have just standard blocking and tackling, to use a football analogy, and now [we have] much more audible-type training," he said. "Which basically means we'll tell the cadets, this is the mission we want you to go do. The evaluated portion is really halfway through the mission we'll say 'Oh, something has changed.' The fluidity of thought there, the rapidity of thought, the ability to improvise - those kinds of skills which you really can't put in a book, you can only exercise through practice, are being measured and evaluated with much more detail." While Vacchi said he doesn't track the statistics, ROTC graduates from as recently as two years ago would be now probably preparing for their second tour of duty overseas, and those from 2005 and earlier would be wrapping up their commissions in the army with at least one deployment. Still, he said, the fact that every ROTC cadet who enters the program understands the likelihood of overseas deployment does not deter prospective recruits. Recruitment is up, as well as the quality of recruits, he said. "I take that as the bravery and the commitment to service of [the current] generation," Vacchi said. "What I tend to believe is that these [cadets] are saying 'I understand the risks, but you know what? There are other people over there sacrificing and I want to do my part.' And that's pretty commendable." For veterans like Zagami, who looks forward to graduating later this spring, the goal now is to get an education. "We're just like you. We're just like everyone else on campus. We're no different," Zagami said, wearing jeans and a UMass sweatshirt, and with an Under Armour backpack by his side. "We just decided to take a different route to get here." Derrick Perkins can be reached at dperkins@dailycollegian.com.

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