Two UNCW students will testify Thursday, Mar. 8, in front of approximately 60 congressional members regarding a federal bill to allow out-of-state veterans attending public universities to receive the same tuition benefits that all veterans, residents or not, receive at private universities.

The proposed bill, the Veterans Education Equity Act of 2011, will change how out-of-state veterans pay for their education.

Jason Thigpen and Dustin Brandenburg of the Student Veterans Advocacy Group (SVAG) at UNCW are traveling to Washington, D.C., at their own expense, to join other veterans helping to facilitate that change.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill, the current federal legislation that promises veterans funding for their college education, now pays $17,500 of tuition for veterans attending private universities. Private schools don’t make the distinction between out-of-state and in-state students, according to Ann Marie Beall, director of military admissions for UNCW.

But the GI Bill doesn’t pay the same amount for student veterans attending a public university. In spring 2011, the GI Bill paid the college costs of both in and out-of-state veterans in full. By the summer session, it was changed so that those without residency would have to pay the difference between out-of-state and in-state tuition out of pocket.

For veterans at UNCW, the change meant a $12,000 increase in tuition for 70-80 student veterans, according to Beall. There are about 600 veterans at UNCW, and 450 of them use some form of the GI Bill.

The Equity bill will grant those who use the GI Bill up to $17,500 in financial aid, regardless of whether they attend a public or private university.

 “We’re all hoping on the Equity bill,” said Beall.

In this case, the amount of funding for student veterans is in the federal government’s hands.

The university considered several short-term options for the students, but the money wasn’t there, according to Beall.

“If we can’t help everyone, how do we decide what few students would get these benefits?” says Beall. “It would cost at least one million (dollars) to cover that difference. In the current economic state, one million just isn’t there.”

Shannon Miles, financial aid advisor for UNCW students affiliated with the military, agreed.

“It’s about how much the government is willing to pay for out-of-state,” said Miles.

Some states have created legislation to help veterans pay for college in the meantime.

North Carolina isn’t one of them.

Miles sits on the advisory board for military veterans at UNCW, the Veterans Task Force. One of their tasks last year was to investigate what options student veterans had. One of the options considered was the Yellow Ribbon Program, where a university dedicates a certain amount of funds to student veterans and Veterans Affairs matches the amount. 

Many private institutions use this program to help offset the expense of private universities, and rising tuition costs are forcing public universities to consider the program too. All universities enrolled in the program, public or private, choose the amount they can give.

“It’s structured so that the school has the choice,” said Miles. “But it wasn’t a feasible option at the time.”

It’s also about whether the state wants to consider veterans automatic residents, a policy that other states with smaller student veteran populations than North Carolina have adopted. 

“For an out-of-state student it definitely makes it harder and they have choices to make,” said Miles. “Whether they’re going to pay that difference out of pocket, whether financial aid is available, and whether they’re willing to take out loans.”

Amy Hector, the advisor for the Student Veterans Organization (SVO), which is run by UNCW students, said the changes were devastating to out-of-state students.

“Many students had to take addition 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 Hector.

Veterans that were already considered residents of North Carolina continued to pay in-state tuition, while those who had yet to establish residency were sent an email over the summer disclosing they would need to establish residency or pay a new balance for the fall semester.

The student veterans sent in their applications for residency to admissions and waited. Many veterans were denied for summer and fall semesters but were granted residency in the spring when they appealed their decision.

“Time may have been what made the difference,” said Thom Rakes, who chairs the Campus Residency Appeals Board. To be granted residency, a student must have been a resident for at least one year. Some student veterans could have been considered ineligible in the fall and were then eligible in the spring because a year had passed since they applied for residency.

The decision for the summer and fall semesters came too late for students to apply to other universities. In some cases, they only had a month’s notice. Some chose to defer enrollment or to attend a community college, but none chose to attend a university in the state they were considered residents of.

Those affected by the change needed to stay in school to receive housing benefits that the GI Bill provides, known as base housing assistance, or BAH. They had to secure loan money to pay for the tuition hike so they could stay in their homes.

Jessie Jaramillo is a marine biology major who transferred to UNCW from a community college in Virginia this fall.  He is involved in SVO, and spends his free time scuba diving when he can. His mom was in the Navy for more than 20 years, so Jaramillo has lived around the world, including in Japan, Hawaii and Italy. He started high school in Puerto Rico. He graduated in Virginia. His parents had since moved back to San Diego, Calif., where Jaramillo is from. Jaramillo’s got his almond-shaped eyes from his Irish background, his tan skin from his Hispanic background and his lean figure from his Italian grandparents.  

Jaramillo doesn’t consider any particular state his home.

He was in the Iraqi desert for two deployments; 18 months from 2006 to 2007 and a year in 2008. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder that incorporates the constellation of Orion, which is what he focused on in the night sky during physical training. He has an army tattoo on his left shoulder.

Here in Wilmington, where Star Wars plays on his television and his dog sits at his side in his second-story apartment, is where Jaramillo calls home now.

He moved into an apartment complex five miles from campus with his roommate, also from Virginia, over the summer.  The financial aid office notified Jaramillo of the tuition changes that June, before he had registered for classes at UNCW and moved to Wilmington. But by then, he had already made arrangements to transfer, and it was too late to register for classes at his community college.  He had two options; stay in Virginia with friends and go to school this spring, or empty his pockets and take out loans for UNCW fall and spring tuition in hopes that by the time the fall semester began, he would qualify for residency.

He chose to stay in school, and his advisor, Shannon Miles, started his residency paperwork.

He now has more than $17,000 in student loans.

 It’s hard to tell how many out-of-state veterans chose not to transfer to UNCW, according to Miles.

“There was a big drop in applicants who had planned to attend in the fall,” said Miles.

But Jaramillo’s story is a common one among returning students.

“We had very few returning students that did not choose to pay for the difference,” said Miles.

Although Jaramillo should qualify this year, he has doubts.

“I’ve heard a year, I’ve heard two years, I’ve heard they always find a way not to give it to you,” said Jaramillo.

His doubt stems from complaints from student veterans that the evidence they provided to establish residency wasn’t enough for the Campus Residency Appeals Board, which decides 200-300 appeals per year, according to Thom Rakes, the chair of the board.

Jonathan Burr, a student veteran involved in SVAG, appealed his decision three times, but wasn’t granted residency until he met with the board.

Burr had applied to transfer to UNCW for the summer of 2011; he had earned all his basic studies credits while active-duty. When he applied for residency, he was denied. Then, he appealed the decision for fall of 2011 and was denied.

Burr applied to Penn State, was accepted and was going to transfer. But he soon found out that he wasn’t considered a resident of Pennsylvania either.

He wasn’t a resident anywhere.

“I would have started in the fall there,” said Burr. “It would have been absolutely worth it.”

When he appealed again, he provided the board with the same evidence he had submitted before.

Burr had bought a house in Jacksonville in 2008 and has been paying property taxes ever since. Governor Bev Purdue sent him a letter to welcome him home to North Carolina after his four years of service. His discharge papers indicated that he was both an interim and a permanent resident of North Carolina. 

After reviewing all these documents, the board granted Burr residency for the spring semester.

There was an $8,000 difference between what Burr was going to pay and what he was charged.  He accepted a Pell Grant but it didn’t cover his total costs; he had to use student loans to pay for his summer and fall semesters at UNCW, about $4,000 for each semester. 

Many students like Burr who were declared out-of-state by the Office of Financial Aid appealed the decision because they had lived in North Carolina for over a year. Students that appealed this spring and won their appeals won’t have to pay out-of-state tuition for the spring semester, but they won’t be reimbursed for the significant raise in tuition they paid in the fall–including Burr.

Many who appealed were still not granted residency at all. 

A student veteran himself and a recent recipient of the Purple Heart, Thigpen is using his political clout to raise awareness of this issue in the congressional arena.

He has attended 23 hearings for students across the UNC system. Thigpen helps student veterans put their appeals together, but the students must speak for themselves during the hearings. They cannot be represented, but they can bring legal aid for counsel.

The board is made up of 30 volunteers who work at UNCW. The board rotates responsibility so that there are three board members to hear each case. Rakes isn’t present at any hearings; he provides oversight.

“We found that in the vast majority of cases, the students provide more information for the board to use in their decision,” said Rakes. 10 to 15 percent of students go on to appeal their case to the state after their hearing in front of the board, according to Rakes.

The hearings are closed to the public and therefore are not public record. The only record of the hearing remains in the student’s file.

 “Every student that we advocated for during their hearing won their residency,” said Thigpen. “In some cases we used the same documents in the appeal to provide evidence for residency that the student used in the decision.”

Many student veterans at UNCW had joined the armed forces for the education benefits; some were just beginning at UNCW, but others had used their GI Bill to pay tuition for years.  

Those still considered active-duty and their dependents were not affected by the changes to the GI Bill. Dependents are usually spouses or children of men and women in the armed forces.

Dr. Bill Ayers heads the campus extension site in Jacksonville, where there are more students active-duty or dependents of active-duty than not. They are considered in-state residents, even if they haven’t lived in North Carolina for a year.

“These are not what you would think of as normal undergraduate students,” said Ayers, “I know most students up here by their name, and about 90 percent of them are military-affiliated.”

For many veterans, it still isn’t clear how much documentation is required to obtain residency. Although there is a listing on the website for accepted documents, the board decides which of those are valid.

“My advice is for veterans to bring everything they have to their hearing,” said Ayers.

For some veterans this year, everything they had wasn’t enough.

In the middle of the intramural fields, Cody Hoyt, the president of the SVO, is hunching his back to fit his over six-foot frame into a yellow jersey. Cody paid for his tuition this fall with student loans, too. This spring, he was granted residency; he says it was all a matter of time, not a matter of qualification.

The temperature is in the high 50s, and the grass is colored in patches of green and yellow, epitomizing the beginning of a North Carolina spring. Its past sundown, around 8 p.m. The constellation Orion can be seen off the field, but the bright stadium-style lights prevent the veterans from seeing any stars. There are other sports teams on fields to the left and right.

Hoyt and three other veterans, including Jaramillo, are teaming up for a friendly game of flag football.

“I have no idea who we’re playing,” said Hoyt.

But they’re still playing. They’re unevenly matched; down by one player. By halftime, the boys are rehydrating at the sidelines, wiping the sweat off their faces. They’re tired.

“We’re too old for this,” said one veteran. Another vet laughs. But their laughter can be heard at the far edge of the field, and other teams on the shared intramural fields are looking their way, undoubtedly wondering what’s so funny.