To Whom It May Concern:

Priority registration for veterans is a necessity. Veterans are faced with innumerable challenges in completing and graduating with their degrees in a four-year timeline. Veterans receive a GI Bill, which provides them with costs for their tuition for only eight semesters. Several issues arise from denying veterans priority registration. Veterans are out of school for an extended period of time, serving our nation, and as a result are often times behind in English and math. It may take veterans two to three years to catch up and meet graduation requirements, due to these setbacks. Several required courses fill up quickly and offsetting a veteran’s schedule by even one semester can be detrimental, putting him or her in a situation in which they will be unable to graduate.

In addition, recent changes to federal laws have made it so that West Virginia University needs to distinguish itself as a university that takes care of its veterans. If not, we will lose an invaluable population of veterans to other universities that provide outstanding care and service to their veterans. This includes not only priority registration, but also making continuing improvements and enhancements to our Veterans accommodations and affairs. Now is the time to act. We, as a university, must serve those who have so bravely served and continue to serve us.

Providing veterans and enlisted members of the armed services with priority registration will increase the currently extremely low retention rates for veterans at West Virginia University. It will allow veterans to complete their GI Bill paperwork faster and receive their payments more efficiently. West Virginia University is one of the only four-year institutions in the state of West Virginia that does not provide veterans with priority registration. Several states, such as Pennsylvania and California, have implemented laws that require public institutions to provide veterans priority registration. Whereas West Virginia is home to a larger veteran population than any other state in the United States, and providing veterans and enlisted members of the armed services with priority registration would address the needs of the men and women that serve our country, we the students of West Virginia University show our unconditional support for providing priority registration to these students.

Respectfully,

The Undersigned Names of Students of West Virginia University