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Veterans' Day Eternal Flame Vigil
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November 10, 2011
Memorial Hall
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!
I have great pride in beginning this vigil with you today. It gives me great pride to stand with our student veterans to commemorate their bravery and courage.
I am also proud to announce that a national panel of student veterans has rated UMass Amherst a "‘military friendly school." To support our population of more than 320 certified veterans in our student body, we have a dedicated Veteran Services Office in our main administration building, a specialized student orientation process just for vets who are entering UMass Amherst, and we are proud participants in the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which matches funds with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in order to make our tuition affordable for out-of-state student veterans.
I am proud of our reputation, which has attracted 70 new student veterans in our first-year class this Fall. I’m proud that we can make a first-rate education available to men and women who have given nothing less than their best in courage, intelligence, stamina, guts, ingenuity, creativity, and sheer loyalty.
The actual physical landscape of our campus was in fact shaped by the GI Bill. As you may know, the main purpose of that legislation, signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was to delay the economic effect from the huge influx of former servicemen entering the workforce all at the same time. So the GI Bill was written with a provision to fund returning soldiers to enroll in colleges and universities. Of course, this resulted in a huge influx of former servicemen entering the world of higher education all at once! So it may interest you to know that many of our residence halls were built after wars. The fact that we are able to house so many students on our campus is because we made soldiers welcome on our campus.
Not only has the presence of student veterans altered the landscape of campus physically, but intellectually as well. Your on-the-ground foreign policy experience through your encounters overseas in the field, with other cultures in real time, and your wisdom of the difficulty and price of war, have made you in your own rights states-men and -women. Please know how valuable you are to us, not only for what you have done, but for what you do, what you bring to our community. You are, to say the least, a tremendous asset to our university. You are bravery itself and I am proud to stand with you in any capacity, and on this day as your Chancellor.
I wish each and every one of you a Happy Veterans’ Day!
