On Feb. 23, the Skyline Veterans Club served as host for an on-campus event welcoming back student veterans and raising awareness.

Jarom Vahai, president of the Veterans Club, was host for the event and invited various representatives.

Vahai said the purpose of the event was to welcome veterans to Skyline. “We want to raise awareness that there are veterans here. We have 113 veterans on campus.”

The event started at noon and ended about 2 p.m. with various representatives from different organizations talking with students in the quad and the cafeteria about veteran services and opportunities.

Vahai and other club members said the main objectives of the event were to educate veteran students about what they’re entitled to and to unify them as a group on campus.

“There’s a lot of information I’ve been able to give out just by word of mouth. I’ve been able to help veterans who didn’t realize they had certain benefits for education, hospitals or retirements,” Vahai said. “So it’s important that we get together so everyone is aware of these benefits.”

One of the more noticeable guests present at the event was Sgt. Matthew Stohner, an Air Force reserve recruiter who, despite being in full uniform, was there not to recruit but to support.

“I’m here today to support our veterans and also to promote about the Air Force reserve to veterans who are eligible to continue in the military service. They can do so as a reserve member of the Air Force,” Stohner said. “And it’s for awareness; we let people know because a lot of them think you need to go on active duty just to join the Air Force, which is not true.” Stohner said the flexible scheduling and the close proximity of the Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield makes it possible to serve while continuing an education or maintaining a family.

Stohner is scheduled to return to Skyline on March 3 to try to recruit students.

Both Vahai and Stohner socialized in the quad for most of the event while other representatives were in the cafeteria. Such representatives included Rich Brugger, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8750 in Daly City and member of the Marine Corps battalion in San Francisco.

“I’m here to help out other vets to let them know of the programs that are available to them,” Brugger said. “That they can get some compensation if they were injured mentally, physically, in any war or if they had some kind of (physical) problem that got aggravated when they were in the service.”

At one point during the event, a student veteran told Brugger about a claim that was refused. Brugger advised the student to try again and added that if he were to get the same results, he should come see him again and he would offer to drive him to Oakland to do the claim over there if necessary.

During the event, Brugger shared his space with another representative, Carolyn Livengood, president of The Avenue of Flags. The Avenue of Flags is a not-for-profit group that oversees Veterans Day and Memorial Day programs and raises public awareness about Golden Gate National Cemetery’s historical significance.

“We raise awareness of the importance of the men and women in service to our country by being out in the public,” Livengood said. “We also brought information about our next veterans program, which will be a Memorial Day program.”

Livengood’s reason for attending the event was largely an ideological one. She did not enlist in the military, but she grew up in a household with many veterans and lived through World War II.

The event also included members of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, which parked its 38-foot mobile vet center near lot M.

One of the representatives tending the mobile center was Dustin Noll, a readjustment counseling technician who came at the request of Vahai.

“We do outreach specifically for Iraq and Afghanistan campaign veterans but also veterans in general,” Noll said. “We brought the mobile vet center here because it’s an eye catcher, and at the same it’s capable of providing counseling as well as getting people enrolled in the VA medical system.”

Noll said there are only four mobile vet centers in all of California, each of which is used to help communities and districts which don’t have VA hospitals or clinics readily available.

“Vets centers’ main purpose is for readjustment counseling for those who have been in areas of combat operations,” Noll said. “Secondly, we provide financial counseling (and) educational counseling.”

During Nolls’ stay on campus, veterans and their family members came by throughout the day asking about benefits and claims they’ve submitted to enroll in the VA medical system.

This is the first semester the Skyline Veterans Club organized a welcome-back event, and Vahai said they plan on doing so every semester from here on out.

According to Vahai he does this to help out his fellow veterans so they are more enabled to lead productive lives.

“We have a lot of veterans now who make up a large part of the unemployed and homeless because they don’t know about their benefits and rights that were given to them by the veterans who fought before us,” Vahai said.