UT graduate student Timothy Riley worked in U.S. military intelligence in the early 1990s and then did a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2003. Riley said he thinks Veteran's Day has been taken over by commercial interests.
"I kind of get mad at the newspaper circulations that honor veterans with Veteran's Day sales," he said. "But I myself may wear a pin so people will know I'm a veteran and can ask questions, and I try to keep [other veterans] in my thoughts."
Riley, 32, is part of the UT Student Veteran's Association. Members of the group believe veterans are invisible to people with no ties to the military, so it can be difficult for veterans to find each other on campus. Members have served in the Air Force, Army and Navy, and both undergraduate and graduate students can join.
The number of veterans on campus is unknown, as well as how many and how often students are deployed, mostly because not all veterans register for benefits under the GI Bill and other state and federal aid programs. The Office of the Registrar said about 359 students are registered for GI or dependent education status and an additional 135 students receive benefits under the Texas Hazelwood Act.
"We wanted to be a conduit of information for veterans at the University who may not know about certain benefits that they qualify for, and also just a social network," said Starr-Renee Corbin, the association's outreach coordinator and one of the founders of the organization.
A women's and gender studies graduate student and mother to a 3-year-old boy, Corbin was a communications officer in Operation Iraqi Freedom. She returned from a tour of duty in 2005, although her husband has been in Iraq since April. Corbin founded the group last semester with Arabic and linguistics senior Margarita Jimenez, 31, an F-16 avionics technician in the Air Force who was stationed in places ranging from Arizona to Korea.
On Oct. 3, Student Government created an agency to serve as a voice for student veterans in SG meetings and to network with other University entities. The Counseling and Mental Health Center, eager to incorporate services for veterans, also created new programs that ease the transition from soldier to student. Current students in the reserves or National Guard can be called up at anytime, and the group wants the University to be equipped to handle a student's departure and return. Corbin said, as it stands now, providing for students on active duty depends on the academic department, and some departments are better than others.
In addition to veteran's service, Riley said, a goal of the association is to bridge the divide between solders and civilians and to address military stereotypes. Anyone with questions can come to the group meetings.
"What brings us together is our former military service or association, but we are still an extremely diverse group," he said.
Daniel Villarreal, a group member and graduate student, is a ranger-qualified Army infantry officer who was stationed in Honduras.
"I'm not shy about mentioning that I was a soldier for many years," said Villarreal, 52. "But having said that, I really get sick and tired of being stereotyped as a soldier."
He said a professor once accused him of being a party to the killing of Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara - an experience that makes him want to spend time with other veterans.
"Not that I think we're clannish, I think we're probably a very diverse group as far as personal interests, politics - believe it or not - and majors, family background, etc.," he said. "We are not the monolithic, robotic people they think we are in the faculty lounge."
The association's secretary and biomedical engineering graduate student Eric Spivey said people are surprised when he says he is a veteran, because he does not fit the stereotype. He said, on the surface, many misconceptions about the Army come from Hollywood images of uptight soldiers who are wired to kill and return from war psychologically broken. Spivey, 31, was a medical evacuation helicopter pilot in Bosnia and Iraq.
"We are a cross-section of the nation," he said, "and we really should be a cross-section of the nation, I think, in order for us to do our job effectively."
With Veteran's Day right around the corner, Corbin considers the day an occasion to honor the generations of people who fought in World War II or Vietnam, not a holiday that recognizes her own military service.
"I still think of veterans as people like my grandfather. Even as a veteran, I still look at it as a day to say thanks to people like my parents and my grandparents," Corbin said. "When I was in Iraq my father sent me an e-mail [on Veteran's Day], and it was weird, because now my family is calling me."
For more information on the Student Veteran's Association, see its Web site at
www.texasvets.org.
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