Words.
"Student veterans began applying for education benefits in May, and we were supposed to have our tuition paid and receive our housing and book stipends in August. That didn't happen. Instead, more than two months into the school year, most of us have received nothing, although the VA is graciously offering to advance us emergency checks of up to $3,000 to ease the economic burden of not yet receiving the money we were promised.
Along with healthcare, job experience and a steady paycheck, the GI Bill was one of my primary reasons for joining the Army in 2004. I went into the military -- and spent a year in Kirkuk province in northern Iraq -- with the express intention of pursuing graduate studies when my contract was up. Truth be told, I wouldn't be writing this column right now, as a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, were it not for the GI Bill. Or at least for the promise of the GI Bill.
At this rate, it will take longer for the VA to get me my education benefits than it took for the Army to turn me into a soldier.
Why can't student vets get the money we were promised back when the Post 9/11 GI Bill was signed in July 2008?
...By the VA's own count, more than a quarter of a million education claims have been filed by eligible veterans since May 1, and about 70% of those have been processed. While this might sound great, let's not confuse processing with disbursement of funds. As of the first week in October, despite having about 900 employees working overtime to process claims, the VA had distributed only 27,000 payments for tuition or for living and book stipends. In other words, nearly 200,000 veterans hadn't received a dollar.
...To add insult to injury, some veterans who did receive emergency checks apparently are having trouble getting them cashed. The VA website doesn't say this explicitly, but notes: "In many cases these checks are handwritten and could pose concerns of fraud from banks." There's now a special telephone number for banks to call so they can verify the check's authenticity and the veteran's identity. Perhaps tellers will have better luck than I did in penetrating the automated phone system. As soon as my call went through, a digitalized male voice informed me that the VA was experiencing a high volume of calls. Then the phone disconnected.
...When Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) said veterans "who have been serving since 9/11 should have the same opportunity for a first-class educational future as those who served during World War II," I believed him.
So did hundreds of thousands of my fellow student veterans."
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