Many AU student veterans have not received their GI Bill payments on time, in part because of AU’s calculating process and recent changes to the GI Bill.
GI Bill payments are essential for the livelihood of many veterans, AU Vets President Roger Deming said.
“What we’re not getting is called BAH [Basic Allowance for Housing] payments,” he said.
These payments include a monthly stipend intended to help veterans with living costs. Since many veterans are older than typical college students, they often have extra expenses such as cars, insurance and caring for family members.
“Most of us depend on that [money] for rent,” AU veteran John Kamin said.
The GI Bill now requires school officials to check if veterans are receiving any additional federal scholarship money, which is then deducted from their BAH stipend, Deming said.
The changes went into effect Jan. 1, according to an article by Terry Howell on Military.com.
The process of getting veterans their BAH payments has to be done in person. The process used to take five minutes per veteran and now takes 35-45 minutes to process each veteran, Deming said.
Associate Director of AU Central Valerie Verra helps each veteran find out how much money he or she should receive from the government. This process involves searching through multiple systems that are not necessarily compatible with one another.
The process takes much longer than it used to, causing delays, Deming said.
The reasons for these delays are twofold, Verra said in an email.
The federal Veterans Administration, which is responsible for certifying veterans to receive their stipend, has been backed up due to the large number of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
AU is also partially responsible because they do not have a simple way of calculating how much money each veteran will receive, Verra said in an email.
“More important, however, is the fact that the military population of AU has doubled since the new GI Bill has gone into effect,” she said.
Both Deming and Kamin said Verra has been “tremendous” in helping them work through their issue, but there is still only so much time she has to spend on veterans.
Both Kamin and Deming were still able to pay their rent without the payments.
“I was blessed enough that I earned a fair amount of money on deployments and saved it because I knew I was going to college,” Deming said.
Kamin said he did not receive his payments for January until a week ago.
“I was still able to pay my rent,” he said.
However, Deming said other student veterans are “in pretty dire straights right now.”
“The AU students are not the only veterans who’ve had to deal with these delays,” Kamin said.
George Washington University and Georgetown University student veterans are also being affected as well as veterans at schools across the country, Kamin said.
AU is taking steps to stop the federal payment delays, Verra said.
“Veterans processes are a high priority item for AU, and we are presently working on such projects to streamline AU’s internal processes,” she said.
AU Central is in the process of certifying two more AU Central staffers to handle veterans’ affairs, in addition to Verra.
“The transition from military life to college is difficult as is,” Deming said.
rzisser@theeagleonline.com
