November 11. For most Harvard students, the day denotes a forgone holiday respite or a chance to fulfill wishful superstition at 11:11 on the palindrome date, 11/11. For a small flock of eight, however, November 11 signifies a day of cognitive dissonance: a day of self-celebration, representative of a formative time in their lives while in service of America, of the bitter and the sweet.
November 11: Veterans Day.
Notably, November 11, 2018, marked the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I. On the observed date, Richard Martinez III ’21 graced a wood-paneled stage in Harvard’s Memorial Church. The church itself serves as an heirloom of the Great War, an ode to peace and to the sacrifice of Harvard men who renounced the comforts of Tercentenary Theatre for the call of the trenches.
Martinez recited an address that pays homage to the fallen war hero, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). His speech culminated in a request to listeners who peppered the pews before him. “On this day, from here on out, thank me for my service by realizing the responsibility of your own,” he bellowed into the echoing chambers of the hallowed church.
That responsibility to service begins with a pronounced effort to understand undergraduate veterans, their stories, and their spaces as shaped by institutions like Harvard.
The Road to Harvard
The typical Harvard introduction consists of an itemized list: name, year, House affiliation, and concentration. In our interviews, these men greet me with their unit memberships: “First Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment,” “82nd Airborne Division, fourth-generation Infantry,” or “101st Airborne, with deployment to Afghanistan.” For the unaccustomed civilian, these phrases are unintelligible strings of jargon. But careful conversation and research promptly alert me to the demonstrated acumen and leadership capabilities of these men as they rattle off the names of the U.S. military’s most prestigious units.
Once upon a time, Thomas Bassett ’21 labeled Harvard a far-fetched dream, little more than a pop-culture reference. Presently a Harvard junior and economics concentrator, Bassett previously served in the Ranger Regiment, supporting missions overseas as the leader of a mortar team. He describes mortars as “indirect artillery assets,” tube-like contraptions that enable users to shoot grenades across expansive distances and from high angles. His military experience is impressive to say the least: he trained in Sniper School and served as squad leader during two of his three deployments.
For Bassett and many of his peer veterans, the decision to apply to Harvard originated at the behest of a friend formerly in the service, a Company commander, or comparable figure. Initially, after high school, the colleges in their purview traversed their locales: Fresno State or the University of Arkansas.
Long before finding his way to Harvard, Andrew Ulick ’21 briefly matriculated at the University of Arkansas. Sitting across from me, he boasts two numerical extremes: a cumulative GPA of 0.25 upon dropping out of the university and being the oldest student at Harvard College, at age 34. Ulick is a Korean linguist turned Special Operations private contractor who also dabbled in the start-up world.
Adorned with smiles of ironic humility, he and other fellow veterans intimate that their GPAs — in high school or transient college settings — would have likely barred them from Harvard. The lot of them credit their acceptances to time spent in the military, each having emerged with an unconventional forte of perspective and experience.
Chris Looby, a Senior Harvard Admissions and Financial Aid Officer, rhapsodizes their distinctive presence. “I feel as though the veteran population is a very important piece of our student body,” he wrote in an email to the HPR. “Each of these individuals brings with them a powerful life experience that has the potential to add great value to our community.” In the simplest of ways, Bassett demonstrates this: describing the time he offered expert insight into the use of drones overseas in a popular introductory government course: International Conflict and Cooperation.
Past the Gates: Tackling Admissions and Building a Community
A historically underrepresented population at Harvard, Native American admits in the Class of 2022 alone quash the total number of enrolled U.S. military veterans by nearly five times. Community was difficult to come by, until Looby introduced Bassett to fellow student veteran Luke Sajer ’20. Together, the two founded a formal organization for undergraduate veterans in 2018. Sajer recalls an immediate camaraderie that he attributes to the fact that both served in the 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, despite never having crossed paths there.
The recently-established Harvard Undergraduate Veterans Organization sports a two-pronged mission. The first encompasses the creation of a support network within the College, inclusive of international veterans. The second seeks to demystify an admissions process that often proves nebulous for prospective veteran applicants.
For instance, Bassett never took the SATs in high school, seemingly impertinent given his scores would have expired before he began his applications. Undeniably, many Harvard students were herded into an SAT preparatory course or crammed practice tests in the comfort of their homes. Bassett’s description of his SAT study space reads like a scene plucked from King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table — similarly antediluvian, as makeshift as a magical sword, and outside the bounds of the average Harvard student’s lived reality. He and six companions would congregate around a small wooden table, built from scratch, reviewing algebra and vocabulary in the middle of Afghanistan.
Unsurprisingly, the SAT/ACT standardized duo presents a high barrier to entry for members of the military. Accordingly, the allure of universities like Columbia — who have instituted more manageable exams like the General Studies Admissions Exam — has mushroomed. Transfer application pathways create additional issues, like when trying to receive class credits. Myriad veterans have already completed college-level courses, common practice for those who seek to advance in the military. In order to serve and undertake coursework simultaneously, many individuals opt into online forums like the American Military University or University of Phoenix. As such, these students attempt to apply as transfer students, but Harvard grants credit selectively, often rendering transfer status unachievable.
To the College’s credit, a number of current student-veterans report having received guidance from programs like Service to School, with which Harvard partnered in 2017. However, not all veteran applicants use, or are even aware of, these counseling services. Ulick happened upon the program at the suggestion of a Navy Officer-turned-Stanford professor, but Chris Chicoine ’21 never participated in an equivalent program. As a result, he had no knowledge of the extra application pages available for veterans.
The most rigorous challenge, however, stems from the ivy-covered, red-bricked Harvard of it all. Harvard’s reputation is simultaneously its most attractive selling point and most formidable challenge. Longstanding elitist imaging has branded the school as financially inaccessible. Unfortunately, many veterans remain oblivious to Harvard’s affiliation with programs like the G.I. Bill, so they settle for state schools whose tuition the G.I. Bill will cover in full.
The G.I. Bill, which compensates service members roughly $22,000 in tuition money, supports matriculated veterans around the country. The U.S. government also offers supplemental funds through the Yellow Ribbon program, for housing and other amenities, in order to enable veterans to attend more expensive, private colleges like Harvard. Harvard Financial Aid works to bridge residual fissures.
Affordability issues are not limited to these misconceptions. “It can sometimes be the case that the most stressful process I am associated with when it comes to our veteran population is financial aid,” said admissions officer Looby. “It is important to me that finances do not detract from their classroom or social experiences here at Harvard.” Until recently, veterans’ inability to qualify as financial independents limited adequate access to Harvard aid, according to student-veteran Eli Schmerler ’19. He described the upended policy as a victory for veterans: “[Qualifying as an independent] used to be impossible.” Looby and this cohort of veterans were integral in mobilizing this change, demonstrative of Harvard’s budding engagement with the veteran community.
There emerges a confounding state of affairs: a college that often punts the onus of advocacy on the constituent student and the occasional administrator. Even with periodic triumphs and the backing of a robust alumni organization, this begs the question of Harvard College’s support for veterans once on campus.
“It was such a shock to me that it’s 2018 now, and we just created a veterans club,” Bassett contends. He noted the formalized organizations for numerous affinity groups and Harvard’s bountiful patronage of these networks. “There’s potentially 17 years of post-9/11 veterans coming through Harvard, with potentially zero support system. I’m happy that [the club] worked out, and that we’re doing it, but I think that I shouldn’t have had to do it.” Ulick reached past student organizations, pointing out that Stanford and the City College of San Francisco — both of which he attended — installed entire departments dedicated to veterans’ affairs.
How can a pioneering institution like Harvard be so retrograde in its infrastructural support?
Harvard’s Historical Relationship with the Military
Third only to West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard has produced more Medal of Honor recipients than any other higher educational institution. Yet, in a disappointing first, Harvard falls short in a U.S. News and World Report ranking on “Best Colleges for Veterans,” where Stanford, Dartmouth, and Cornell top the 2019 list.
Harvard’s historical relationship with the U.S. military offers the semblance of an answer. The College’s cozy marriage with the armed forces disintegrated in the wake of the vastly unpopular Vietnam War. Harvard divorced itself from its preeminent role as a service school, an identity that dated back to the Revolutionary War. Administrators severed formal ties with any and all manifestations of the military, including the R.O.T.C. The reinstatement of its Air Force, Army, and Naval arms was initiated after four decades in 2011. A byproduct of this interregnum: the university’s once-familiar relationship with the U.S. military faded, and Harvard’s tone deafness to an entire student contingent magnified.
Harvard has endeavored to better embrace this identity in recent years. When this band of veterans organized formally, they expected to tackle issues on their own. They have since realized a dream Sajer never envisioned: an administration willing to listen and revamp the system. He and his peers allude to concrete progress and ongoing, face-to-face discourse that includes student-veterans, the Admissions office, and deans, with University President Lawrence Bacow at the helm.
Perception and Reception on Campus
Further probing reveals only mild critiques paired with spouts of gratitude from the six veterans interviewed. Their criticism spans the inescapable awkwardness of trumping their peers in age and strongly-encouraged participation in the first-year housing system. Most came to appreciate the forced integration or moved off-campus shortly thereafter. The dearth of formal liaisons, who might check in about mental health or just generally, plagued others. However, with support figures in Looby, resident deans, and proctors, many felt at ease in this respect. The anticipated moments of friction between the stereotyped hyper-liberal Harvard student and the conservative veteran occur in absolute rarity. They have found their peers to be, at worst, innocuously ignorant, and at best, compassionate and respectful.
These men take little for granted, an intrinsic kindness further nurtured when they served. Schmerler confesses that he was startled by Harvard students’ tendency to scour Facebook or text in class his freshman year. He devoted 626 hours of training to become a geospatial engineer, more hours than he will ever catalogue inside a Harvard classroom. Martinez conveys his short-lived exasperation after receiving a grade of 44 percent on a psychology midterm: “Within another 24 hours, I’m rolling back over because … I’m not dead.”
With vignettes like these, each of these veterans displays a steadfast gratitude for three things: Harvard, America, and the privilege of being able to call both home. Family and neighbors alike questioned, “Why are you throwing your life away?” but still they enlisted, with shared, palpable conviction.
Martinez was impelled by his belief that “every person has a moral prerequisite to give something other than themselves to society.” Chicoine, having witnessed an exigent need for troops in Afghanistan, felt, “if someone had to go and make a difference, it should be me.” Both belong to an extensive military pedigree, which also informed their decisions. Bassett knew he would regret abstention. Ulick sought to replicate the insignia of his most heartening foster home: a military home. The lot of them were enchanted by the military as adolescents.
With the exception of Chicoine, who continues to serve as a Medical Sergeant in the Reserves, none intend to return to active duty. All of them appreciate the privileges of “private citizenship” and being “regular civilians,” nomenclature that frequents our discussions. They aspire to be Rhodes Scholars, government leaders, singers, and Silicon Valley CEOs, not all too different from the eclectic assembly of wide-eyed first-years who arrive at Harvard every August.
Still, the sensibilities that distinguish them re-surface quickly. In addition to the aforementioned titles, they employ telling descriptors to describe their career ambitions: “morally-fulfilling,” “truly good,” and “selfless.” I ask them to single out resonant memories from their time in the service. The responses ring out as if in chorus: “all of it” and “my defining moment was the whole experience.”
Our Responsibility to College Veterans
In keeping with the most foundational experience of their lives, these student veterans seek to drive tangible change for their successors. They worry about the veteran community’s muddled future on campus. This coterie has considerable momentum in their current campaigns: “an explosive start, with an ambiguous finish,” Sajer summarized. Harvard College finally enabled a critical mass of U.S. veterans — compounded with the support of international veterans — to facilitate ongoing advocacy and the establishment of an organization. Yet, in 2018, U.S. veterans comprised eight students on a campus of approximately 7,000. And while that number has grown, it’s a group small enough to be so well-acquainted that they all refer to one another with the fond, unmistakable catch of a last name. The six that I spoke to are all men, adding yet another dimension to the issue of representation.
“We take our lives for granted because we can,” Martinez recited in his Veterans Day speech. “We fuss over politics because we have a right to. That is a privilege not shared with the rest of the world, and yet we squander it … On this day, from here on out, thank me for my service by realizing the responsibility of your own.”
Perhaps our responsibility begins with understanding and gradually accelerates to uplifting. Every year, we are joined by individuals who are not only college students, but also geospatial engineers, combat medics, elite rangers, or most significantly, veterans. To understand, we must engage with veterans whenever we can; to uplift, we must fortify representation of this community on Harvard’s campus and beyond. Let us recognize that ownership of our responsibility to this community can begin with the simplest of starts: remember, remember, the 11th of November — not just as a day in time, but as a piece of the lives of those who walk among us.