Wright State VMC located in Allyn Hall | Photograph Marissa Couch | The Wright State Guardian
Recently, approximately 300 National Guardsmen were activated in Ohio.
Wright State has around 110 students who are in the National Guard or Reserve and about 40 who serve on active duty, according to Seth Gordon, director of the Veteran and Military Center (VMC).
Currently those activated are assisting in several prisons where coronavirus has begun to spread. There are also groups assisting in delivering groceries and food.
“Faculty members are encouraged to work with students who experience legitimate and verifiable absences in such a way that both the faculty and students’ educational goals are met,” according to the Excused Absence Guidelines at Wright State, which includes military activation as an excused absence.
“The faculty member determines if accommodation is feasible and the appropriate form of alternative work or educational experiences.”
The accommodations
There are many different solutions to accommodating students who have been activated but there is no common baseline for accommodations.
Every department, program and individual professor decides the accommodations for each specific situation, according to Gordon.
“We created a checklist for students who might get deployed so they can follow through but the guidelines for whether or not we have to accommodate them are really left up to the individual programs and faculty,” said Gordon. “Given the fact that every program is so dramatically different that what blanket policy might work for one program, it might not work for another one.”
Suggested accommodations include giving the student the grade they had earned in class until activation, giving students an incomplete while allowing an extended timeline for completion, or creating alternative assignments that can be done during the student’s activation.
Any student who withdraws from courses due to being activated can still receive a “W” after the final listed deadline, according to Gordon.
“We’re accommodating them by being their advocates basically, myself and Amanda Watson,” said Gordon. “If a student really needs support, we’ll jump in and work with the faculty to make sure that everybody understands what’s expected of them. They’re supposed to be able to, according to Ohio Revised Code, to leave without there being any major impact to their studies.”
Wright State’s involvement
At this time, there are four known students who have been activated at Wright State. Students are not required to notify Wright State of their activation.
Ohio has one of the better-run and more efficient National Guards in the United States, but there is no indication if more National Guard members will be activated or how long this will last, said Gordon.
The VMC offers many different services, resources and educational benefits to all U.S. Armed Services veterans and all active duty, Reserve and National Guard service members.
According to the VMC, they serve transfer of entitlement, spouses, widows, and orphans of U.S. service members who are using GI Bill Benefits and vocational rehabilitation students funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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