Once many offices on campus are relocated with the completion of the Academic Commons Building, registered student organizations looking for space will turn to recently vacated spots in the Guillot University Center. Among these is the Military and Veterans Alliance, which hopes to find space to establish a Veteran’s Support Center for students, said current advisor retired Lt. Col. Wayne Bergeron.

 “We’ve been talking to David Shields about getting us a permanent meeting place in the GUC,” said Calvin Lyles, president of MVA. “The latest I’ve heard is that with all this shifting and rearranging going on with the new buildings coming up it’s going to be a while before we get some kind of permanent meeting place.”

Though there is not a space currently available to accommodate the MVA’s needs they expect better options to open up as the new buildings under construction on campus are finished and other spaces begin to open up, Bergeron said. 

The veterans need a place they can go to between classes that they can call their own, Bergeron said.

The alliance was created three years ago by veteran students who felt they needed a voice on campus, Bergeron said.

“We purposely used the alliance model because we want it to be more than just veteran students, we want to include faculty, staff and the community,” Bergeron said. “The organization is there to number one be an advocate for veteran students, to give them a voice.”

What the organization could eventually provide is intangible since the services it provides not firmly established as far as a certain building students can visit is concerned, said Kimberly Young, a member of the MVA.

“What it provides is assurance that there is something on the way to being built, maybe before I graduate,” Young said. “Hopefully there will be an actual visible place for me to go to relax or get the stuff I need.”

As students graduate and move on there will be periods of great activity as well as lesser. The MVA began three years ago and we have been working hard to make our vision of an integrated and fully resourced Military and Veteran Support Center a reality, Bergeron said.

 “If there is one thing I have learned about military members and Veterans is that when given a mission – they will not fail – it just isn’t in their DNA,” Bergeron said.

The MVA is actively searching for new members. “We’ve got something between 250 to 350(students) receiving veteran’s benefits” Lyles said. “We got a good base for a stronger voice.”