Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Staff photo: Alisa Boswell Eastern New Mexico University Student Veteran Organization Coordinator Lori Brunsen talks to student veteran Alex Massey about their plans for a house on South Avenue F Wednesday. The organization plans to use it as a headquarters to help veteran students.
MANAGING EDITOR
link Staff photo: Alisa Boswell
Eastern New Mexico University Student Veteran Organization Coordinator Lori Brunsen talks to student veteran Alex Massey about their plans for a house on South Avenue F Wednesday. The organization plans to use it as a headquarters to help veteran students.
People would likely guess that a hole-in-the-wall shack on South Avenue F is about to become something really special.
The house has been leased to the Eastern New Mexico University Student Veterans Organization, which is about to turn it into a university USO-type (United Service Organization) facility for student veterans.
SVO Coordinator Lori Brunsen said a local man donated the house to the AMVETS Post 14 in Clovis, which agreed to lease it to the SVO for $1 per year.
Brunsen said the commander of the AMVETS post, Tommy Knight, is also a contractor, and he is doing the renovation work on the house for free.
‘We’re excited,” Brunsen said, adding they hope to have the house complete in time for the fall semester.
According to Brunsen and student veteran Alex Massey, the house will entail an information office and two bedrooms for veterans who move to Portales for school but have not yet found a place to live.
Brunsen said she had a veteran student live with her for three months last year, because they did not have their own home yet.
“What we really want to do with it (the house) is turn it into an information center, a resource center with computers, Internet, a printer, a library,” said Massey, who served in the Marine Corp for four years.
The organization currently has an office in Bernalillo Hall, but it is not easily accessible to veteran students nor does it have a bed to offer if needed.
“Most people don’t realize how many vets are here,” Massey said. “The problem with our organization is finding a needle in the hay stack. The only way we (SVO members) found each other is because we happened to talk in class.”
Massey said it’s easy for veteran students to feel out of place when starting in college, because they are usually older than other freshmen, are well traveled and have had much more life experience as well as the military discipline.
“The jargon we use, the experiences we’ve had and the bureaucracy we go through is what makes us (who we are),” Massey said, adding that is why it is so important for student veterans to support and help each other.
He said when he first started school, his GI bill to help pay for it didn’t come in until November, well over halfway through his semester.
“The school would kick me out if I didn’t pay, but the military would take away my GI bill if I wasn’t in school,” Massey said of the double-edged sword. “That’s one of the things we want to help people do is navigate the bureaucracy of post military life.”
“Even if they (veteran students) have the GI bill, they’re not using it,” said student veteran Kyle Clark of other veteran students.
“Or they don’t know how to use it,” added student veteran Corissa Breeden.
Those are examples of paperwork issues the organization wants to help with veteran students out with at their new home base as well as providing temporary room and board.
“It’s (also) about getting people to understand because if they don’t understand who you are, it makes things even more difficult (in school),” Breeden said.
Brunsen said the house will also be used to host veteran events and barbecues.
She said the SVO is applying for a grant, which would give them a $10,000 gift card to Home Depot, but any donations the community offers to go towards the house’s renovation would be greatly appreciated.
