Before coming to MIT, I served in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier. Most of my time in service was spent deployed in Eastern Europe, conducting NATO ally reassurance missions and counter-Russian aggression operations after the annexation of Crimea. Since being accepted to the MIT AeroAstro program in 2019, however, MIT has failed to correctly certify my Veterans Affairs (VA) educational benefits. MIT was noncompliant with federal regulations and unresponsive to my calls to action. These educational benefits are guaranteed in the Post-9/11 GI bill, which provides tuition and housing allowances to veterans who honorably served the country. These benefits enable veterans to gain skills that will help them transition to civilian life through educational and economic support. These benefits have allowed me to begin a new career which is useful and exciting. I joined the MIT Student Veterans Association (SVA) to advocate for the improvement of this situation for all MIT veterans.
Since August 2020, the SVA has highlighted the lack of support for and neglect of the veteran community here at MIT. This has included the lack of a Veteran Support Office, access to coordinated VA healthcare, and data on the identity and number of veterans we have on campus. Even with strong support from the Institute Community and Equity Office and faculty like Professor Amy Glasmeier, the issues brought forth by the SVA are largely ignored or marginalized.