Download PDF of this full issue: v5n7.pdf (7.7 MB)

GI Bill Struggle

By VVAW

S.F. State Vets Fight Late Checks

Hot air from the VA bureaucrats, Ryan tape hassles, and continually checks, has been the answer vets have gotten from the recruiter's promises of educational benefits. Vets have been getting runaround this year just as they have in the past.

Vets haven't been taking this lying down. One example is the vets at San Francisco State. A group called Vets For Decent Benefits at San Francisco State was initiated by the local chapter of the Revolutionary Student Brigade and rank and file vets. This committee has been taking up the struggle against late checks and winning. The committee grew out of the anger of vets who discovered that their checks had been "lost", "delayed", or were "in process". For most of the vets this meant a delay of six to eight weeks for their first, while the last day to pay Fall registration was only two days away.

Vets were forced to take money out of savings, or thinking have the money in the bank to get booted out of school for failure to pay required fees. At the same time the school's emergency fund went dry by the second day of school. On top of all this, with the economic crisis coming down on all of us and unemployment a lots higher for vets, those forced out of school would find no place to go. The local Vets Affairs Office answered this with the solution of handing out being BankAmericard applications -- which they graciously gave instead of assistance.

Seeing this situation, the Revolutionary Student Brigade put out a leaflet demanding, "Decent Benefits for All Vets", and "Checks on Time", which called for a meeting to get vets together. Thirty angry vets showed up for the first meeting, then rots out how the past people have tried to deal with the VA alone and as individuals and had gotten nowhere. People agreed that what was needed was to unite as many vets as possible to demand their checks on time. As one vets at the meeting said, "We don't have beg for anything, is all right!"

The vets decided to confront the director with their demands. A small group went to his office. The director went through the same old contortions trying to bend the truth to say that late checks were just the problem of a few individuals--who themselves were generally at fault for late checks. But the people didn't buy that and it was also clear that the vets there were speaking for more than just themselves, but for vets across the country. As people left, they made it clear that this was just the beginning. One vet told the VA director, "We'll come back if we don't the action. And next time you'll need 20-25 guards to stop us because it won't just be a dozen vets who'll come up here, but 50 to 100."

Immediately following the meeting, checks began arriving for the individual vets who had taken part in the action. In fact, that afternoon the director himself handcarried one of the checks to SF State.

Following this action the committee invited the VA director, Fred Bradley to the for a hearing. This was to continue the battle and expose the VA for what it is.

Approximately 70 vets showed up. According to Bradley the problem was the mail service, the Kansas City office, Congress, or more often than not, it was the vet themselves! During the course of the meeting it was brought out that no matter how much Bradley tried to portray it as a handful of cases at SF State, thousands upon thousands of vets are facing the same problem across.

Cincinnati Vets Battle VA 'Ohio Plan'

Veterans at the University of Cincinnati are getting together to fight for the GI Bill benefits they were promised. The immediate point of attack is against a whole collection of new restrictions and late checks that the University, but this is only one part of the overall attack coming down on student vets across the country. And, as Cincinnati vets have learned, VA is planning to pull some more tricks out of it sleeve in the near future.

The Veterans Upward Bound program at the University is the focus of the VA attack right now. The program, which came out of the struggles of vets and benefits, is supposed to help vets get their high school diploma or to brush up on high school subjects in order to go to college and get the GI Bill. But vets in the program have been continually harassed; they've been thrown out of the program for more than 6 absences (despite the fact that many of the these vets have to work in order to survive). Some vets were thrown out of school because they couldn't pay the entrance fee on time--and they couldn't pay it because their VA checks were late, or never came at all. Tutoring, which is supposed to be part of the program, just is not available.

When under attack, vets fight back. Meetings were held; edition was circulated. When the administrators of the program found out that vets weren't taking the harassment lying down, the chief bureaucrat started coming to meetings and classes, to say that no one had been thrown off the program because of a few absences were late check; in fact, he came to one meeting with dozens of checks in his hand. He promised an end to harassment and said that no one would be thrown out of the program because of late checks in the future. And he tried to pass off the same tired story vets here everywhere: there's no money, so protests get us nowhere and we have to be happy with whatever crumbs are thrown our way.

Vets confronted his lies, pointing people who had been thrown out; when administrators tried to keep people from VVAW and throw the Revolutionary Student Brigade from speaking a large meeting, they were shouted down with shouts of "Let them speak, you turkey." Vets see that the only reason the administrator is making promises about no harassment because vets organize to fight VA attacks.

But the VA has more plots and schemes to try to cut back on the GI Bill; after all, the system the VA is part of runs on profits, and when, as in the case GI Bill, there are no profits for the class that runs the country, then they want to cut their losses as much as they can get away with. A new statewide policy in Ohio is being planned--that attendance must be taken in any class vets are in, and vets will lose all benefits if they are absent over a small number of times. Changing courses or programs, incompletes, low grades, all mean losing the GI Bill. Lines include no credit (so no GI Bill payment) for courses over a certain size, or for courses offered in large schools. All of these attacks go under the name of "Satisfactory Pursuit of Education Objectives" policy; translated out of bureaucrateze, it means trying to force vets off the GI Bill.

Vets at the University of Cincinnati say no; if this pilot program gets going in Ohio, it will soon spread elsewhere. But the same fighting unity which grew around the Upward Board struggle and forced a change in administrative policy, will also stop pilot programs. Another attack by the VA is being met by angry refusals and fighting counterattack.