Inside the Veterans Support Services office at the College of Staten Island, where student veterans work on assignments, take naps, watch movies, and get help registering for classes. (Credit: Hannah Glaser)
By Hannah Glaser, Asad Jung, Rafael Escalera Montoto
Logan Guerin is a computer science student at the College of Staten Island, and how he cast his vote in the presidential election will have less to do with his also being a veteran and more to do with concerns that hit close to home – he’s voting with the economy in mind, specifically housing.
“You’re 21 years old back in the day, you can buy a house,” said Guerin. “No one can afford that now.”
While veterans as a group are as diverse as any other in terms of issues that they care about, both the Harris and Trump campaigns have — like presidential candidates before them — made veterans and what the campaigns define as veterans’ issues part of their pitch to voters. And with both their vice presidential running mates being veterans, their own military service has been added to those talking points on the campaign trail.
But these talking points often end up obscuring the diversity in veterans’ perspectives, whose concerns vary as much as those of the general public. This diversity of viewpoints is also visible across the CUNY system, home to more than 3,000 student veterans.
The College of Staten Island is the top rated small public school for veterans in the entire nation by the Military Friendly ranking of colleges and universities, as reported by the outlet G.I. Jobs. Other featured CUNY schools in those rankings include John Jay College, rated #10 in the nation for large public schools, Lehman College, and Kingsborough Community College, both of which received a Gold designation.
Flyers outside the Office of Veteran Services, including job postings and yoga classes. (Credit: Asad Jung)
Victor González, 39, who served as a cavalry scout in the Army and is now studying political science at Queens College, says he developed a deep appreciation for the importance of alliances between countries during his service.
“It’s so important to figure out how to make friends around the world, not enemies,” he said. The Army was a way of completing his education, but it also made him appreciate what is at stake in the political process.
“Our political choices are the difference between being deployed or having more diplomacy,” he said. He doesn’t want a president who won’t work to maintain U.S. alliances, he said.
‘Stressing Me Out’
Laura Scazzafavo, director of Veterans Affairs at the College of Staten Island, knows exactly what students are going through as they navigate civilian life. Scazzafavo enlisted in the Navy in 2001, serving 8 years before coming back to get her degree at CSI. After graduating, she began to work for the department and now guides students as they transition out of the military, the same way she had, taking them through everything from explaining their benefits to helping them get their disability paperwork processed if needed. That last one isn’t technically a part of her job, but she wants to make student life as easy as possible for them.
Scazzafavo said that a perceived lack of respect for the current and former armed forces members she served alongside and works with every day has influenced her opinion of candidate Donald Trump.
Citing reports that he called veterans “losers,” as well as an incident at Arlington Cemetery where a Trump campaign staffer attempted to film soldiers’ graves for political purposes in violation of federal law, she feels Trump “disregards traditions of the military… It’s very scary.”
Other vets are prioritizing issues at the ballot box that have little to do with their service. Many of the veterans the New York City News Service spoke to echoed sentiments outside of military service, shared by large percentages of Americans, exemplifying the fact that the issues student veterans care about can at times have more to do with their everyday lives as Americans rather than military-related issues.
Amanda White, 36, a criminal justice student who was stationed in Arizona, said that working with people of diverse backgrounds helped her understand where many of their concerns come from, despite not always agreeing with them. Her military service also helped her put differences aside in service of a bigger goal. White said that her identity as a veteran is not the most important influence on her voting. The issues she cares the most about, education and healthcare, are the same as they were before her service. She currently works as a general manager at Staples and is frustrated by how much she needs to pay for health insurance.
Like her students, Scazzafavo has her own priorities and fears for this election season. She’s concerned with womens’ rights, and thinks the U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world in having a national female leader.
Compared to other countries like Germany and the United Kingdom, she says “the U.S. is in the Middle Ages still.”
One of the main things on her mind, like many Americans, is anxiety around the election.
“It’s really stressing me out,” Scazzafavo said.