SGA Senate to decide on Veterans Day bill

Weeks after Veterans Day, students are debating whether VCU should do more to commemorate the Nov. 11 holiday.

The Student Government Association is expected to decide Monday on a student-sponsored bill, the VCU Freedom Act, which asks the university to recognize Veterans Day on future university calendars.

The holiday commemorates the Nov. 11, 1918, signing of the armistice that ended World War I and is recognized by the state and federal governments.

The bill also seeks recognition of World Freedom Day, which falls on Nov. 9 and celebrates the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. On Nov. 9, 2001, President Bush proclaimed that date World Freedom Day in a speech that compared the fight against totalitarianism to that against terrorism. Government offices, however, do not close on the holiday.

The push for VCU recognition of Veterans Day and World Freedom Day began Nov. 10, when members of the College Republicans of VCU collected more than 500 petition signatures from students of various political orientations in the Commons Plaza. Only 50 signatures are needed to introduce legislation in the SGA.

Recognition of the holidays may seem like a mere symbolic gesture, but students Aine Murphy Norris and Emily Wingo of the College Republicans said it would mean much more. It would be an active effort to better integrate student veterans, who are relatively low-key on campus, they said.

“Students need to be aware that veterans aren’t just Vietnam vets or World War II vets or these older men that you see wandering around,” said Wingo, chairwoman of College Republicans and a senior political science major. “They’re students just like the rest of us as well.”

Carl Hill is one of them. A junior nursing major, Hill has been in the Air National Guard for about eight years and served in Iraq in 2004 for four months.

“Students need to be aware that veterans aren’t just Vietnam vets or World War II vets or these older men that you see wandering around. They’re students just like the rest of us as well.”
-Emily Wingo, chairwoman of College Republicans

Hill, president of the Student Veterans Association, said it’s only appropriate that a bill like the VCU Freedom Act pass. More than 500 students are currently receiving veterans benefits, he said.

“For the last two years, there have been no ceremonies, no observances, nothing,” Hill said, referring to Veterans Day. “I think it’s really sad that VCU doesn’t recognize its veterans.”

Veterans require special attention, he said, because they are a unique group of individuals from all kinds of backgrounds.

“Take me, for example: 30 years old, I have three kids, a wife, and I’m trying to go to school,” Hill said.

Jessica Lee, senate chair of the SGA and president of the Young Democrats at VCU, said no one disagrees that student veterans need attention. She said she hopes the SGA votes to do more for Veterans Day, but World Freedom Day, with its emphasis on defeating communism, seems like a conservative ploy for attention.

Given the bill’s current language, Lee, a junior political science major, said she would vote against it because it clumps the two holidays together. She said the manner in which the bill has been presented to the SGA disappoints her because she was under the impression the effort was nonpartisan.

She said the College Republicans’ involvement is “probably going to do a big disservice to the bill and the impact it will have if people know that it’s coming from a conservative standpoint, rather than just letting students’ voice stand on their own.”

The bill’s current language, however, is not final and could change before its fate is determined. The SGA Legislative Issues and Civic Action Committee will decide today to amend or approve it, after which it will go to the full body of the SGA for a vote Monday. The legislation needs a simple majority to pass.

The legislative committee will meet today at 6 p.m. in the Canal Room of the University Student Commons. The full body of the SGA will meet Monday at 4 p.m. in the building’s Forum Room. The meetings are open to the public.