2014 February 5

A K LEO T H E

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 5 to THURSDAY, FEB. 6, 2014 VOLUME 109 ISSUE 50

Serving the students of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

V O I C E

www.kaleo.org

Legislation, university improvements top Veterans Affairs agenda

RO OMA MANC NCE E& SEX SE X GU G ID DE

NIGHTS FLIP TO CENTER

ILLUSTRATION BY NICHOLAS SMITH/ KA LEO O HAWAI‘I

NOELLE F UJII News Editor

The Task Force on Veterans A ffairs will continue to review its list of potential recommendations on how the university can improve its services to student veterans, along with a piece of legislation that will direct UH to create veteran resource centers on each of its campuses. “We anticipate that one of the recommendations we’re likely to make is that there needs to be some sort of a governing or a guiding body similar to the task force that continues to exist on a longer-term basis,” said Christopher Manaseri, Ph.D., Dean of Student Services at Leeward Com-

munity College and task force chairman. “So one of our recommendations is likely to be that a group like the task force continue to help coordinate the university’s work in support veteran students.” The 15-member task force was formed on Nov. 22 after UH Interim President David Lassner had an open call for nominations.

A L I S T O F R E C OM M E N DAT I O N S Manaseri said the task force’s list of recommendations varies from issues concerning a dedicated support staff on each of the campuses that is specifi cally trained to work with veteran students, to the university’s policies and practices. “We would like to explore making sure

that veterans are able to receive credit where possible for training and learning that may have occurred while they were in the military,” Manaseri said. One of the major issues the task force needs to deal with, according to Manaseri, is some uniformity of approach to the Yellow Ribbon program, which is a way of helping veterans to receive support toward instate tuition regardless of their residency. “We’re not sure that that’s something that we would end up supporting, but we do know that there’s a problem because students who might start at one of our community colleges where they’re eligible for Yellow Ribbon and then transfer to M ā noa, for example, are no longer eli-

gible for Yellow Ribbon and so their tuition costs can triple or quadruple in the process,” Manaseri said. The task force would also like to explore the possibility of creating some form of a veterans resource center, either physical or virtual, that would be available to every UH student regardless of how many students are actually on their campus. “So we know we’d like to look at potentially some sort of gateway or a portal that would be supported. So a veteran student on Kaua‘i could have access to many if not all of the same supports that a veteran student at M ā noa or at Leeward might have,” Manaseri said. Continued on page 2