Post-9/11 G.I. Bill Update: In My Opinion...

Yesterday, I received a phone call from a colleague of mine who works as a student-veterans' consultant for the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College. He passed along a memo from the Buffalo VA Regional Office to campus education claims representatives across the Northeast asking them to square away their paperwork.

The memo discussed how claims-processors were not filing paperwork for the correct chapters of the G.I. Bill, which has contributed to incorrect payments and increased delays in benefits-delivery across the region.

At colleges around the region, payments have started to trickle in for tuition. However, living stipends remain MIA.

Matt Susko, an Army veteran of Iraq, said that his school, Cape Cod Community College, received his tuition, but he has not seen any kind of compensation from VA beyond his $3,000 emergency living stipend check.

On Monday, Bob Brewin from NextGov reported that DC-area student-veterans were still missing their G.I. Bill living stipends and that the VA Monday Morning Workload Report still showed only a slight reduction in claims awaiting adjudication.

Last month, VA retained the services of ACS Federal to assist with claims-processing--a move AMVETS hesitantly supported. However, as Brewin reported, the move hasn't changed much to this point in terms of the backlog.

I hate to keep harping on the G.I. Bill delays, but my own experiences leave me pessimistic about Chapter 33 implementation and the effects on today's student-veterans' community.

When I returned from Iraq, I sought to take advantage of my new Reserve Education Assistance Program (REAP, Chapter 1607) benefits. After speaking with leaders in my unit and reading up on the new benefit, I went to apply with my VA representative at URI. She had never heard of Chapter 1607 or REAP and had me write in my query on the old Montgomery G.I. Bill paperwork.

Needless to say, nothing happened immediately. I had to re-file my paperwork and enroll under my old benefit, which was fine at the time. It took about six months to sort out Chapter 1607 and I was entitled to some significant back pay once it was sorted out.

At the time, REAP was a substantial increase in benefits, but in no way did it cover the complete cost of my education. I held down several part-time jobs and took out student loans to make up the difference.

Fast forward to 2009 with the complicated Chapter 33 benefits and more than 80,000 student-veterans immediately seeking to take advantage. Compound this with many students who were counting on Chapter 33 to cover all the expenses associated with a college education, including rent, utilities, and groceries, and campus employees who file these complex claims as a collateral responsibility and you're left with finger-pointing about who dropped the ball.

Though VA has the money to pay each of veteran filing for Chapter 33, time is critical. Though I had the luxury of waiting for my paperwork to be sorted out, many of the veterans enrolled in under the new benefit are literally down to their last dime. While schools may understand that the "check is in the mail," this story is a little more difficult to explain to the cashier at Stop & Shop or the clerk at the Sunoco station.

If there's anything veterans know how to do, it's hurry up and wait. But there's even a breaking point for us. Rumors have already started to circulate that veterans plan to drop out of school in the spring just to avoid what they see as an inevitable hassle.

AMVETS leaders are doing all they can to reassure veterans that the money is on its way and that these initial hiccups should not repeat themselves over the next two semesters, but patience is understandably wearing thin.

Personally, I hope that ACS and VA can sort out this backlog quickly and deliver benefits in time for winter break, but a great deal of this still rests on the claims-processors working efficiently on the college campuses.

At some point, the blame has to shift off of VA. From what I've seen, they have been responsive to the concerns of the veterans' community, but the same cannot be said for the schools.

AMVETS leaders have been screaming for colleges and universities to prepare for the influx of veterans this fall. This latest memo from Buffalo indicates to me that certain schools did not take these warnings seriously.

So, I guess we can only reiterate what Buffalo is telling the claims-processors on college campuses: Pay attention to the details. You're the most critical step in ensuring our veterans receive the benefits they have earned.

-Ryan

If you have a Post-9/11 G.I. Bill issue that you would care to share, please feel free to leave your comments below.

I Will Never Forget: My personal 9/11 story

I was an undergraduate at the University of Rhode Island on Sept. 11, 2001. I was dating a girl, Kerry, at the time and she happened to stay over my dorm room in Fayerweather the night before. My roommate, Danny, had to be up early for an 8 a.m. class.

Shortly before nine, our phones started to ring. We thought nothing of it, let them go to voicemail, and rolled back over. But they both kept going off. Kerry and I were getting annoyed. After all, we had been up late the night before and neither of us had class until the afternoon.

Finally, I answered. It was Danny. He told us to turn on the TV. His mother in Hoboken, N.J. had just called frantic, saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I was worried, but I quickly thought back to the 1994 attacks and how benign they seemed at the time. Regardless, I turned on the TV and saw the smoke billowing from the north tower. I was stirred, but not shocked--I still had no concept of what was actually happening. The shock came when the second plane slammed into the south tower as we watched live. Speculation over whether or not this was an accident could immediately be thrown out the window.

I turned to Kerry and said, "well, the shit hit the fan."

I had joined the Army Reserve just after graduating from high school in 1999, and we often used that phrase to describe the most unlikely of doomsday scenarios under which we could all be instantly called to go to war. I was now watching this unlikely scenario unfold right in front of me.

As the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 rolled on, the gravity of the situation became apparent. News came in that a third plane had struck the Pentagon and another was hijacked somewhere over western Pennsylvania. This was the real deal. How many planes were hijacked? America was clearly under attack, but on what scale? Were we even safe in Middle-of-Nowhere, R.I.?

Kerry and I were glued to the TV as innocent people jumped from the towers to avoid the horrors of burning alive. We heard reports from the ground that police and firefighters were running into the building and other first responders were thinking of ways to possibly evacuate those stranded above the points of impact.

This was all for naught. As reporters struggled for words to describe the situation that was unfolding, the south tower gave way, plummeting to the street below.

Smoke and dust quickly swallowed up downtown Manhattan and nobody could say for sure what just happened. Then came confirmation that the south tower had collapsed. What now? How many people were inside? How many people got out alive? Could the north tower possibly be saved?

The grim answer to that last question came a mere 29 minutes later when the top floors succumbed to the burning jet fuel, leading to another chain reaction as the north tower's internal support structure buckled, collapsing to the ground with thousands more innocent civilians and first responders trapped inside.

Danny finally returned from class and the three of us did our best to sort through what we had just seen. Danny, Kerry, and our other friends from the New York metro area scrambled to try and contact loved ones potentially caught in the mess. Cell phone lines were clogged and many of my friends were left wondering what exactly had happened to their families. Later in the day, we learned that Danny's mother had watched the towers fall from her office window across the Hudson River.

In an effort to calm down, Kerry and I retired to her sorority house and talked for the rest of the morning about what we had witnessed. Class was an afterthought. She finally managed to get a hold of her mother in northern New Jersey and her father on Long Island. Though they were never really in danger, it was comforting to know they were safe. That night, as expected, I received the dreaded call from my Reserve unit. They had put together a security roster and were calling us in for overnight rotations.

Upon hearing the news, I called my friend Rish, a member of the Rhode Island National Guard at the time. He had received a similar call. We talked outside of my dorm for about an hour amid the eerie calm of empty skies. I would get off easy at the time. I only had to pull about a week of overnight guard shifts at my Reserve center before they formally activated some of my fellow soldiers for 90 days of duty. Rish was not so lucky. He was put on orders from the National Guard to pull similar shifts at his unit, eventually forcing him to withdraw for the semester.

After 9/11, the fall semester was by far my worst at URI. With the war ramping up in Afghanistan, my friends working around the clock, and Reserve training kicking up about 10 notches, it was hard to focus on anything else. Eventually, I turned it around in the spring, but now Iraq was closing in our radar.

Fall 2002 I made the dean's list, but in late December my Reserve unit was put on alert. We were going to Iraq. I quickly withdrew from URI, made arrangements to move out of my house, and basically packed up my life for a year to go serve my country.

The moment the two planes hit the towers has now come to define the subsequent eight years of my life and great deal of my personal character--a week of balancing overnight armed guard duty at my Reserve unit while juggling fall classes, my year-long deployment to Iraq, my subsequent motivation to graduate upon returning home, my work at the Naval War College, my move to Washington, D.C., and my work today for AMVETS and American Veteran magazine.

As the war in Afghanistan continues to heat up, I implore all Americans to remember the mission at hand: Holding those responsible for the 9/11 attacks accountable for their actions. Osama Bin Laden remains at large, Al-Qaeda continues to carry out attacks on our allies around the world, and the Taliban continues to inflict harm on Americans looking to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Today, I hope we each pause to not only remember the victims at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pa., but also the 2.5 million brave men and women who answered the call to serve our nation in the wake of 9/11--especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

To me, Afghanistan is a war worth winning--something that we must never forget, even in the wake of discouraging polls about the "value" of our involvement.

I will never forget and I will continue to support all the brave men and women serving in harm's way. This is my personal story of 9/11 and how it has affected me. We're eager to hear your personal stories on this blog.

-Ryan

(Photo: The World Trade Center towers burning on Sept. 11, 2001 with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground. National Parks Service photo, released.)