Student veterans have a new place on campus to come together and find support this Veterans Day.
USC's chapter of the Student Veterans Association, a national organization of veterans now seeking higher education, opened their new Veterans Center with a ceremonial ribbon cutting as part of their Veterans Day celebrations.
For some of USC's own student veterans, like SVA president and fourth-year interdisciplinary studies student James Hull, Friday's opening was a long time coming.
"Today's event is a culmination of over a year of pre-work and getting things ready to submit to the grant [process]," he said.
The center, located on the Mezzanine level of Thomas Cooper Library, is one of the first of its kind. Carolina is one of just 50 schools to receive a grant from the Home Depot Foundation to create the center, though SVA's eventual goal is to put a center like this on every college campus with veterans across the nation.
SVA treasurer Ashley Bunnell, a third-year social work student, hopes that the center can both immediately serve as a positive environment for USC's more than 1,360 student veterans and grow even bigger in the near future.
"Right now it's just going to be used as a space where veterans can come and hang out with people who share similar experiences and build camaraderie ...," she said. "We hope to outgrow this space very soon and be in a new space in the next few years."
Jazmin McCrea, SVA's vice president and a fourth-year information technology student, touched on the importance of giving student veterans the "safe space" they need to feel at home.
"It's very difficult to transition from being a service-member or a veteran into a campus lifestyle, so we find a lot of veterans don't feel included on campus and we want this space to ... fill that need."