EL CAJON, California – Critically acclaimed author Brian Castner, who wrote of his experiences returning to civilian life following U.S. Air Force service dismantling explosive devices in Iraq, offered a few tips to faculty on how to interact with military veterans who comprise approximately 10 percent of the 18,000 students who will be returning Aug. 19 for the Fall Semester at Grossmont College.
Castner, author of The Long Walk, told a convocation of faculty members on Monday, Aug. 12, that they should remember that “if you’ve seen one veteran, you’ve seen one veteran” meaning that every veteran has had a unique combination of military experiences, and that their war experiences may have been very different from each others'.
Nevertheless, the author was willing to make some general observations about veterans who become students upon returning to civilian life. Unlike those who are hospitalized, or perhaps staying at home, or on the streets suffering the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, student veterans are more likely to be organized , self-sufficient, mission-driven, thinking globally and willing to act locally – in short nearly every professor’s image of a model student.
On the other hand, they may be quiet, may suddenly become sad, and may always seem tired because they may be unable to sleep. They also may have memory problems, which they try to work around by keeping lists and writing everything down.
At the same time, veterans feel a sense of loneliness on college campuses, not just because they may have been damaged by the battles, but also because they had a completely different set of experiences than other college students—be those students youngsters just getting out of high schools, or older students like themselves but who have not been to war.
“The feeling is ‘no one knows what I have done,’” Castner said.
An aspect of this loneliness is the veterans’ realization that while they are still alive, their friends are dead. Castner said that such realization is similar to the feeling that families may have at special gatherings such as Thanksgiving or Christmas when , because of a recent death of a loved one, there is an empty seat at the table, and a ghost seems to be looking over people’s shoulders.
A third thing to remember is that across the board no question is more difficult to answer, and potentially more emotional, than “did you kill anyone?” Castner said. He told of one veteran with whom he served on a panel who responded by asking the questioner about the sexual habits of his or her parents – in an effort to represent how inappropriatel such a question is.
When most veterans are asked that question, Castner said, often they cannot answer yes or no – most battles are not fought in hand-to-hand combat. So the answer might be “probably, we hope we didn’t, but we may have” but in any event it is difficult for a veteran to be asked that question so casually, as if the inquirer simply wanted to know his or her score in a combat video game.
Another issue of which the Grossmont College community should be aware, Castner said, is what he described as the “warrior ethos.” Veterans think of themselves as the people who are providers of help, not the people who receive help. This feeling that accepting help is somehow inappropriate becomes even more marked when veterans are lumped in with other people who need help, be they people who are studying English as a Second Language, or people with disabilities.
Castner related that at one particular recreation center for veterans, when people would be taken on field trips, the expression was “load the wheelchairs,” thereby callously reducing excursions to exercises for wheelchairs and not even for the people who were in them.
While they were in the military, veterans often exercised great responsibility. For example, said Castner, when he was a 28-year-old Air Force officer in Las Vegas in charge of an ordnance unit, he had 60 people reporting to him and was in charge of a $10 million budget. And, he said, there were medics who kept multiple people alive under fire. Yet when the same medics enroll in nursing programs, they are required to be supervised even when they put in an intravenous line. So, as students, veterans often feel that the assessment of their capability has been diminished.
After having seen the conditions under which many people across the world live during military service, or battle, it is “hard to pay attention to the triviality of what kind of coffee I am drinking” or other unimportant issues that seem to occupy other students, said the author.
Sometimes, Castner said, veterans who willingly fought for their country feel more in common with those who oppose the military than with other students. While they don’t agree with them, at least both are engaged in fighting ignorance, he suggested.
In a question-and-answer session, one questioner asked his opinion as to whether in a typical classroom situation, a faculty member should make a point of acknowledging the veteran’s military service, or should no mention be made of it? Castner suggested such mention be made only in context, as for example if the class is discussing warfare, or foreign cultures, or the like. He drew an analogy to a class about World War II – if there were Japanese American students in the class-- it might be important for the faculty member to be sensitive to the different perspectives and if appropriate to inquire about the experiences that student’s family may have had during the war. But in a class about an unrelated subject – say algebra—taking notice of the student’s ethnic heritage would seem out of place.
A faculty member suggested that given their experiences, veterans could provide the nucleus of campus leadership. Castner agreed, saying that there is a group of veterans known as the Rubicon Group, which regularly travels to disaster areas. There also is a Team Red, White and Blue in many communities where veterans join together in doing good deeds.
One faculty member said he noticed the veterans in his exercise science class had a strong sense of right and wrong, and would be critical of other students who were not “lifting.”
Asked how faculty members might engage veterans in conversation, Castner drew an analogy to a conversation he recently had with his 15-year-old son about how to talk to girls. Smile and ask about that person’s interests, was his advice. In the case of veterans, he suggested, questioners should first take the time to learn something about the subject. Where were the theaters of action in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars? Who were the enemies? What were the conditions like?
Castner revealed that he is often embarrassed when people say to him, “Thank you for your service.” Is he supposed to respond “You’re Welcome?” In his view, the United States has overlearned its lesson from the Vietnam War, and is still atoning for the indifferent and hostile way veterans returning from the Vietnam War were treated. Now, some people speak in bumper sticker terms to veterans – “Thank you for your service”—without investing much meaning behind those words.
Asked about homeless veterans, he said that except for the fact that he knew there are higher proportions of mentally ill people and also veterans within the homeless population compared with the general population that he considered a complicated subject calling for more insight than he presently possessed.
But for the fact that Castner, a resident of Buffalo, New York, had a plane to catch for another speaking engagement, the lively Q-and-A session might have gone on longer. The appreciative audience gave Castner sustained applause. - DHH
