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Wright State To Offer Housing Assistance For Student Veterans Affected By Faculty Strike

Veteran and Military Center at Wright State University
Jess Mador
/
WYSO
Veteran and Military Center at Wright State University

Wright State officials say the university is committed to helping military veteran students whose GI Bill benefits may be affected by the ongoing faculty strike.

Wright State has notified some students about potential changes to their class schedules as the strike drags on. Earlier this week, Wright State announced some classes would transition to a condensed, alternative term schedule.

The alternative term would begin in around a month, in mid-March.

On campus Friday some veteran students said they worried the alternative schedule could cause them to lose some of their VA benefits.

Nearly 700 students currently use GI Bill benefits at Wright State. It’s unclear exactly how many have been affected by the ongoing faculty strike. 

Veteran and Military Center Director Seth Gordon says GI Bill housing stipends are especially critical for many veteran students, saying Wright State officials are working on a plan to reimburse veterans whose housing benefits are affected by the strike.

“For those students, Wright State has decided that they will cover lost housing benefits, the housing stipend that students would have normally gotten if they had been enrolled full time,” he says.  

Gordon says only students who maintain their enrollment would qualify for the special housing assistance. He’s urging veterans to meet with academic advisors and department chairs to outline their individual options. 

Campuswide, Wright State reports approximately 3,500 students overall have had classes canceled or left without instructors as a result of the strike.

Jess Mador comes to WYSO from Knoxville NPR-station WUOT, where she created an interactive multimedia health storytelling project called TruckBeat, one of 15 projects around the country participating in AIR's Localore: #Finding America initiative. Before TruckBeat, Jess was an independent public radio journalist based in Minneapolis. She’s also worked as a staff reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio in the Twin Cities, and produced audio, video and web stories for a variety of other news outlets, including NPR News, APM, and PBS television stations. She has a Master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She loves making documentaries and telling stories at the intersection of journalism, digital and social media.