On April 2, the Observer received a complaint to our “Student Frustrations” email account. The complaint,sent to us by Magaly Santana is as follows:

Hi!
I’m a current student veteran at ECC, and here’s why many veterans on campus are frustrated because we have no actual student veteran center. We’ve had many people sign our petitions and we understand that the room we are currently using is a meeting room for guests. Later on after having meetings with the dean of students, the Vice President and our student advisor we were told that we could have room f201. All of this began in December of last year after we were kicked out of b166, so,  we started a petition. We had the meetings and we are still in b166. We do not want to “over step our boundaries” so we’ve kept it pretty quiet, there has been many other problems the veterans are facing like adjusting to the civilian life style and so they rather not care about it anymore. I’m getting tired of meeting after meeting but everyone is dragging their feet! What gives?

This might come as a shock since Elgin Community College has earned the designation as a military-friendly school according to G.I. Jobs Magazine. The Observer spoke with Anitra King, the Veteran & Student Success Specialist, who confirmed that the current room for Military Branches United is B166.

This was also confirmed once more by Greg Robinson, Dean of Student Services and Development, who stated, “ B166 was their temporary room until the found their permanent location.”

Robinson also said that “[ECC] had not taken the room away from Military Branches United and that the decision on room F201 had been brought back to be voted on by the club.”

The permanent location is F201, which will have a ribbon cutting ceremony on May 16.

In a  follow up with Santana about this scheduled ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Veterans Resource Center, who said in an email  “I’m  part of the reason why [the school] is providing a Veteran Resource Center. There was a big push from myself and other veterans to get a space for  military members in the community college.”

If you have any frustrations with Elgin Community College send us an email at [email protected] and the Observer staff will investigate in the fall.