University of Arkansas Schedules Events to Honor Campus Veterans For Their Military Service

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FAYETTEVILLE -- The University of Arkansas will hold three events for Veterans Day to honor faculty, staff, students, and alumni for their military service.

The Veterans Resource and Information Center is hosting a breakfast on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. The "drop-in" breakfast will run from 8:45 to 11:45 a.m. in the Veterans Resource and Information Center, room 632 in the Arkansas Union. The breakfast is in part a thank you to the university's veteran students, but it also provides an opportunity for students to meet with new VA counselor Brian Burgess. Burgess will help student veterans with military benefits at the University of Arkansas and the Northwest Arkansas Community College.

University Programs and the Razorback Student Veterans Registered Student Organization are collaborating to show the 2009 Academy Award winning film "Hurt Locker." The film, which follows a three-man Explosive Ordnance Disposal team during the Iraq War, will be shown Thursday Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. in the Arkansas Union UP Theater.

The RazorVets: Celebrating Veterans banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15 in the Arkansas Union Verizon Ballroom. The event, in its second year, is hosted by the Arkansas Alumni Association and the Veterans Resource and Information Center

"It's our way of thanking our faculty, staff, students and alumni for their military service and their commitment to the University of Arkansas," said Erika Gamboa, director of the Veterans Resource and Information Center. "We started this new tradition last year and received great feedback from those who attended. This year, the event will be held in the Verizon Ballroom, which will accommodate more people. It will be a great way for our past and current service members to meet one another and share their stories."

There are more than 500 students at the University of Arkansas who receive some form of military benefits. These may be veterans, or dependents or spouses of veterans. There is also an undetermined number of students on campus who are veterans but are not receiving military benefits.

"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…" – with these words President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11, 1919, as the first commemoration of Armistice Day after World War I.

On May 13, 1938, an act of Congress (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) was approved making Nov. 11 each year a legal holiday, dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as "Armistice Day." Armistice Day was primarily to honor veterans of World War I. In 1954 the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by replacing the word "Armistice" with the term "Veterans." On June 1, 1954, Nov. 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.