As UNC Wilmington prepares to honor veterans for their service this Veteran’s Day, students should know how much veterans have to give up to go to school here.

To be exact, student veterans give up $12,000 more in tuition than they are supposed to pay.

Due to changes in the federal Post-9/11 G.I. Bill last year, student veterans at UNCW were required to prove their residency in North Carolina to pay in-state tuition by showing documents saying they’ve lived here for over a year. (See here for the full story). Some students had been here for that long, but were labeled “out-of-state” students anyway and were forced to pay almost twice what they were originally paying. Others vets had been accepted and weren’t told until the last minute that they’d have to pay double what they thought. And they had no choice but to stay- the G.I. Bill was paying their rent, and without it, many would have to move out-of-state, thus losing their chance to establish residency a year later.

“Many students had to take additional financial aid to cover this deficit, debt they weren’t counting on having to take on because of a promise that had been made to them by the federal government,” said Amy Hector, advisor for the Student Veterans Organization at UNCW, last year.

The bottom line is, there are student veterans at UNCW with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans-and they are left wondering the value of the G.I. Bill’s promise of a free education.

The Student Veteran Advocacy Group, a nonprofit led by UNCW student Jason Thigpen, is filing a lawsuit against the UNC Board of Governors for discrimination against student veterans. They’ve tried everything else-meetings, hearings, even introducing new legislation in Congress that would relieve some of the financial pressure of student vets.

No one was willing to help.

So student vets have stopped asking for what they were contracted-a free education-and have started demanding it.

A veteran of the war in Iraq, Hayleigh Perez, submitted the lawsuit to a federal court in Raleigh, backed by the SVAG. Perez has become the face of an issue that has plagued student vets for far too long.

The lawsuit, if successful, may help student vets recover some of the money they’ve had to dish out for a “free education.” Maybe they can chop off a couple years of payments on their undeserved student debt.

So this Veterans Day, show student vets that they deserve to be here. Turn around in your seat in class and say, “Thank you for your service.”

It’s a stronger salute than the government is giving them now.