Documenting the Needs of Student Veterans with Disabilities: Intersection Roadblocks, Solutions, and Legal Realities.

Abstract

Colleges and universities are currently experiencing the greatest influx of student veterans with disabilities in the past several decades. These numbers will continue to increase substantially. Student DS providers must be prepared to understand and respond to the often unique and challenging disclosure, documentation, and accommodation issues that student veterans with disabilities can present. These issues, which are often related to combat injuries, may include a failure to self-identify, disabilities that are invisible, late-developing or interrelated, and significant delays in obtaining needed documentation from U.S. government agencies, in particular the Veterans Administration. At the same time, how the recently enacted ADA Amendments Act may impact these issues is not yet fully known. This article outlines practical strategies, advice, and solutions. Just as in the years after World War II and during the Vietnam War, for many veterans, the opportunity to return to school is an important part of their transition back into civilian life (Wasley, 2008). The world of higher education is currently experiencing the greatest infl ux of military veterans in the past several decades. Furthermore, the number of student veterans on campus may increase signifi cantly when the enhanced benefi ts in the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (the new GI Bill) take effect August 1, 2009. Fortunately, an increasing number of colleges and universities, as well as organizations serving the interests of higher education, are developing and implementing targeted initiatives to recruit, welcome and/or assist student veterans. It is important to recognize, however, that the transition of veterans back to college and university campuses often presents unique, difficult, and unanticipated challenges for faculty, administrators and staff, and for the veterans themselves. For many of these students, both women and men, and especially for those who have served in combat situations, their military experiences have set them signifi cantly apart from other students. Not only can their academic, developmental, and counseling needs be very different from those of traditional-age students, they can also be very different from those of other nontraditional students without military experience (Herrmann, et al., 2008; Waybrant, 2008). In particular, the complexity of identifying, documenting and responding to their disability-related circumstances and needs can be daunting for Disability Services (DS) providers for a number of reasons. For example, while some of the physical disabilities

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