POV: Veterans Returning To College Aren’t Victims, They’re Assets

The “Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008,” or the “New GI Bill,” will result in more and more veterans entering colleges and universities. Driven by concerns about these larger numbers of veterans returning home with serious psychological and emotional issues resulting from the prolonged stress of combat and dislocation, and with the memories of tragedies such as Virginia Tech still fresh, colleges, and especially community colleges, are scrambling to ensure that their campuses will have services that are adequate to the needs of these young men and women.

However, if we consider these returning veterans merely as “problems” and “victims” rather than as valuable resources, we will risk losing an opportunity to help them to transform our institutions to better meet the challenges of a complex and rapidly changing world.

Because there has not been a requirement for military service in the United States for more than 35 years, relatively few faculty and administrators under the age of sixty have first-hand knowledge of the military. And what they do know — or think they know — has been influenced by the general anti-military attitudes and mistaken assumptions of the baby boom generation, which for the most part managed to avoid military service during the Vietnam Conflict. Descriptions like “half-crazed Vietnam vet” or “ticking time bombs,” were not uncommon characterizations of military veterans during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, popping up not only in newspaper stories and but in casual conversations as well. 

Another damaging idea that is a memento of the Vietnam Era is that of veteran as victim. Because so many upper- and middle-class baby boomers avoided the draft, it was generally understood that anyone who actually did serve in the military was either not very smart or a member of a relatively powerless and ill-defined underclass. However, regarding our current generation of veterans, as one young Army colonel recently told me: “Don’t call us victims:  We volunteered!”

As we move into a new era of understanding regarding returning soldiers, we must leave behind the old labels and prejudices and take a clear look at the realities of military service and what the new veteran brings to the classroom. Doing so will enable us to see that veterans not only already possess many of the skills that we want all our students to have, but also the values and habits of intellect that should be the hallmarks of academic success.

Certainly one goal we as educators have is to instill in our students a “global perspective.”

There are seemingly dozens of conferences every year devoted to this topic, but the solutions seem to involve the same bland options: require every student to take a foreign language; make a “global” course part of every curriculum; provide enhanced study abroad opportunities and so on.  While none of these ideas are necessarily harmful to students, they will often not give them a practical and experiential exposure to foreign cultures.

Because many military personnel are stationed in other countries — both in combat and non-combat environments — they frequently have a first-hand understanding of culture as it is lived day-to-day, and an often intimate relationship with people very different from themselves.

In order to accomplish their mission, military personnel ignore cultural realities at their peril. As a former Air Force officer, now a provost at a community college, once said to me: “The greatest internationalizing force in our history has been the U.S. military.”

Another goal we have for our students is that they engage in community service.  It is important that we take seriously President Obama’s specific recognition of military service as honorable public service during his inaugural address. It is not easy to be a soldier. It is a profession that requires daily personal sacrifice in pursuit of higher ideals and the common good.

And how about our desire to instill in our students the educational goals of collaborative learning and cooperation?  It is a cardinal principle of military reality that individuals come together to achieve common goals. Although our military is currently an all-volunteer enterprise, it still is composed of men and women of varied experiences, backgrounds, ethnicities, religions and beliefs, who willingly work together and subordinate their individual needs for the common good and common purpose. This is a skill that we wish our students would learn. For our veterans, it’s second nature.

“Don’t soldiers just do whatever they’re told?” a non-veteran baby boomer colleague recently asked me, somewhat innocently, reflecting the common 60s canard that soldiers are brainless automata. This led to what I hope was for him an enlightening discussion about the difference between mindless obedience and informed discipline.

Discipline should not be construed as a synonym for either blind acquiescence or uncritical agreement. In a military environment, discipline most often implies focus, commitment and drive, all qualities necessary to completion of mission.  In the classroom, you can bet that returning veterans will ask hard questions and welcome honest discussion, but they will also do the reading and hand in assignments on time. At many meetings and conferences I attend, I hear colleagues say that we must give students the “skills” to be creative and innovative and to be able to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

While “adapt or die” might seem to have somewhat extreme applications and consequences in a military context, the fact is that the American military has always encouraged initiative and innovation in its soldiers at all levels.

“Field expediency” was an expression that took on real meaning for me when I served in Vietnam and saw so many of my comrades — enlisted troops and officers alike — find creative means of completing our mission even though supplies were delayed or we encountered terrain or other situations we had not anticipated. Certainly one characteristic of the United States military that has made it generally successful is that everyone is expected to lead if the situation requires it.

The veterans who will return to our classrooms will be, for the most part, mature and accomplished young women and men ready to embark on the next phase of their lives.

They will bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience and a depth of character which is worthy of our deep regard.

That some will have problems adjusting, we of course need to recognize and we must be prepared to assist them — as we would any of our students.

However, to treat them as victims is to disrespect not only their service to our country, but also to dishonor them as fellow citizens. Rather we must view them, without irony, as truly being our best and brightest.

Peter Katopes is Vice President for Academic Affairs,
LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, NY

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