Combat vets face hurdles as students

Colleges learning to deal with PTSD, lost limbs, brain injuries

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CORRECTION

A front-page story Sunday about combat veterans going to college incorrectly referred to Natasha McKinnon as an Army specialist. McKinnon was promoted to sergeant.

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RALEIGH -- Spc. Natasha McKinnon survived losing part of her left leg to an improvised bomb in Iraq. Now that she's back, she's trying to find her balance in college life. Sometimes she can't recall a professor's name. She loses track of test dates. Occasionally, she forgets she has pulled off her prosthetic leg to rest her stump during a long lecture, only to tilt off balance when she tries to stand.

As tens of thousands of veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq try to collect on their promised college benefits, McKinnon and others are finding that their combat experience complicates the transition from soldier to student.

Some have trouble collecting the government money that is supposed to pay for college, or they discover that the benefits aren't nearly enough to cover tuition and other bills. While their classmates complain about homework and hangovers, many vets struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, the effects of traumatic brain injury, lost limbs and a range of chronic medical problems.

"Not only am I a full-time student," McKinnon said during a break between classes, "I'm a full-time patient. It takes a toll, mentally and physically. Sometimes I'm there in class, but only in body. Not in mind."

With 1.5 million service members coming out of military duty in Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001, universities across the state and the nation have been anticipating a postwar influx and looking for ways to welcome veterans to campus.

NCSU has a historical connection to veterans; immediately after World War II, the campus was inundated with returning soldiers attending school on the generous GI Bill of 1944. By the fall of '46, they made up more than three-fourths of NCSU's enrollment, part of the national "GI Bulge" that sent 8 million vets to college or vocational training.

Compared to that flood, today's student veterans are a trickle, coming quietly onto campus a few at a time, often without mentioning their military service. No one tracks how many enrolled at NCSU, Duke or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are veterans. If they don't ask for help, the schools may never know they're there.

That may be why many departments at NCSU have been slow to recognize that veterans might need special accommodations, says Cheryl Branker, NCSU's director of disability compliance.

Provisions can include priority seating near a door so a student vet can leave quickly if the crowded room makes him anxious; a quiet room for taking tests, where other students' sudden movements won't send the vet into high alert; or relocating a class to a space that's wheelchair-accessible.

"These are people who have put themselves in harm's way, in a very dangerous place," Branker said. "I just don't see that a person could come back from that experience and the effects be mild. If there is a way to help them, we want to do it."

Generally, Branker says, student vets fall into two groups. Reservists and National Guardsmen are usually in their 30s or older, back from combat duty they never really bargained for and now finally able to pursue the college education they always wanted. Then there are the soldiers in their 20s, who went into active duty shortly after high school, deployed overseas and came back aged beyond their years.

Either one walking into a classroom full of typical freshman might have trouble fitting in.