Community Listening Session: Veteran/System Impacted Student/Admin Roundtable
Bridging Communities—Veteran & System-Impacted Student Roundtable
What happens when student veterans and system-impacted students—two groups navigating college with different pasts but similar challenges—sit down at the same table with administrators to discuss common grounds of resource-development?
This intimate gathering brought together student veterans, system-impacted students, and university administrators from the Center for Justice and the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration. These student groups share powerful common ground: both are often misunderstood, frequently marginalized, and constantly working to navigate—and sometimes survive—traditional academic systems that weren’t built with them in mind.
Our goal was simple but ambitious: spark conversation that could lead to collaboration, insight, and lasting change.
Why This Matters
By exploring shared experiences like imposter feelings, navigating trauma, parenting responsibilities, and the need to code-switch between communities, participants recognized themselves in one another’s stories. Common language emerged organically, including the shared use of the term “civilians” to describe peers outside their communities. These connections revealed not just mutual challenges—but mutual resilience.
What We Learned
Two key themes emerged from the discussion:
1. Trust & Skepticism Toward Institutions
Both groups expressed a deep wariness of institutional systems. But in the School of General Studies, they found a space where they could belong, connect, and speak freely—often for the first time.
2. The Cost of Being “Non-Traditional”
Students appreciated the flexibility of non-traditional programs but lamented the structural silos that often keep them isolated from the rest of campus life. Access to the core curriculum, areas of university/campus life, and policymaking channels are areas of student concern.
The Barriers Are Real
Participants named key constraints they face:
- Limited time and bandwidth, especially for students balancing school with parenting, employment, and overall transition.
- Institutional structures that present for non-traditional students challenges of accessing opportunities and resources.
But So Are the Opportunities
What began as a single event sparked real momentum.
Participants envisioned:
- Ongoing roundtables to continue building bridges and surfacing insights.
- Admin and faculty training that centers the transition experiences of both student groups.
- Storytelling tools—PSA-style videos, essays, and lived experience narratives—to humanize and educate.
- A shift toward “universal grace”—a belief that all students deserve patience, understanding, and flexible support.
What’s Next
- CVTI is developing a reflective essay summarizing key insights and actionable recommendations for administrators.
- A multimedia digital resource is in production, designed to help other institutions implement similar cross-group engagement strategies.
Final Takeaway
This roundtable reminded us of something critical:
Connection doesn’t require sameness—it requires space, trust, and willingness.
By listening deeply and working collaboratively, we’re laying the groundwork for a university culture that sees students not as exceptions to accommodate—but as whole people to uplift.