In downtown Salt Lake City, it’s common to see graying gentlemen with cardboard signs that plea for a handout to a homeless veteran.
About 1,600 homeless veterans live in Utah, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Web site. President-elect Barack Obama might or might not live up to the promises he has made to repair the issue on a national scale. Hopefully, the promised measures reach Utah veterans.
The Utah government, the U and the current generation of college students can do the obvious right thing and give veterans all the care they need to have healthy lives in the society they sacrificed their well-being to serve.
A small step in helping veterans is to honor them. Vietnam-era veterans are estimated to make up 47 percent of all homeless veterans in the United States, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Their plight seems to be directly proportional to the public’s general disapproval of American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The lesson we must take from that is to not correlate the veterans of Afghanistan and especially Iraq with our opinions of the morality of those wars, as seems to have been the case for Vietnam veterans. Even if you are skeptical of the justifications of war in Iraq, the soldiers had little choice but to follow the “Decider’s” call to war.
Today is Veterans Day. This could be the day that U students let that mean something. At 11 a.m., in the Union Ballroom, 13 decorated Utah veterans, 12 from World War II and one from Vietnam, will be honored in a ceremony. Although most are still quite young, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans should be applauded along with them.
Thankfully, Utah’s 2005 legislature passed a tuition waiver for Purple Heart recipients. Also, the outdated Montgomery GI Bill is to be surpassed by the new Post-9/11 GI Bill, beginning August of next year. This bill will give veterans increased tuition aid as well as books, room and board assistance.
The amount of financial aid, ranging from 40 percent to 100 percent of college expenses, will depend on the duration of their active duty or disability. We should fully fund veterans’ education and other benefits regardless of how long they spent risking their lives, which could only have required a single instant to be tragically ended. The nightmares of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder could be the memory of only a few horrific moments.
The U medical school is closely affiliated with the neighboring VA Medical Center, and many medical students do their residency work at that hospital. On Friday, the Medical Center held its Stand Down event to “Reach out to homeless veterans in need of health screenings, benefits counseling, job services, rehabilitation, and other long-term transitional assistance,” according to the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System’s Web site.
If that’s what happened at the VA Hospital on Friday, I am confused as to what goes on the rest of the year.
Apparently, they are providing health care to the veterans who have admirably managed to navigate the wild goose chase of receiving their benefits. There are piles of paperwork required to receive any veteran benefit, whether it be medical, educational or otherwise. The bureaucracy involved is so complex, the VA Web site even has a “Combat Veteran Extended Benefits Calculator” for those wondering what level of care they should be getting. The hoops veterans are required to jump through might prevent many from going after the benefits offered them, meager as they may sometimes be.
Any veteran should be able to provide proof of active service and be granted full health care benefits at VA hospitals, as well as tuition, job and housing assistance. Veterans should be actively sought and encouraged by Utah state institutions, including the U, to take advantage of all benefits available to them.
The lack of easily accessible mental health care and education put Vietnam veterans at risk for homelessness. Let’s speak out for veterans, so that when we, young students, become an active middle-aged citizenry, we don’t have the shame of seeing our own graying generation of former heroes on the sidewalk asking for change that will arrive too little, and too late.
Logan Campbell