By Hannah Gordon
News Editor
St. Bonaventure’s Student Veterans Organization (SVO) welcomed its new advisor and announced its focuses for this school year.
At The Service Collaborative of Western New York, Serve New York funded the AmeriCorps VISTA position given to Morgan Woodson, the faculty advisor for the Student Veterans Organization. Woodson said she’s excited to work with SVO.
“The members of the Student Veterans Organization gave me a super warm welcome and are a very passionate group,” Woodson said. “This year we are hitting the ground running with plans for events and activities to bring our veteran and military students together. If the students of St. Bonaventure weren’t aware of the SVO before, they will be aware of the SVO this year as we plan to have a strong presence on campus and in the local community.”
The first event in the community will take place at Bonagany to raise awareness of the organization’s presence and money to use towards amenities for the student veterans.
“We’ll have a dunk tank at Bonagany,” Brad Peterson, a junior student veteran and finance and accounting double major said. “So far (director of the First Year Experience program) Chris Brown, (Residence Director) Chelsea McBee, and Allegany police officer Timothy Peterson, among others, will be in the tank.”
Money raised will be put towards coins and possibly caps and gowns for graduating veterans to use to help defer the cost of graduation, according to Peterson.
“If you were ever in the military, coins are a huge thing,” Peterson said. “It’s a little signification to keep on you at all times to help identify who you are. We’d like to design a coin for us, so if we have any guest speakers that come in, we can give that to them and they’ll remember who we are.”
SVO wants to introduce an honor cord as well, according to Peterson. The cord would be red, white and blue to identify graduating veterans.
This year we want to focus on developing our presence on campus and letting veterans know we’re here to help,” Peterson said. “If we find out about a veteran coming in, and maybe if he has any special needs or disabilities, we can be prepared to accommodate him or just let him know that we’re here and that we can help out. Identification is a major thing.”
Mike Schneider, safety and security officer and student veteran psychology major, said he is looking forward to the year ahead in SVO.
“I’m excited for the new fresh faces that Bonaventure has and the ideas they bring to the club,” Schneider said. “Student Veterans were leaders on the battlefield and now are putting those skills to work on campuses across America.”
