The North Carolina based Student Veterans Advocacy group filed a lawsuit on Nov. 8 in Raleigh against the University of North Carolina Board of Directors for injunctive release, compensatory, and punitive damages under the violation of their 5th and 14th amendment rights which protect veterans and veterans suffering with post traumatic stress disorder.
The president of the SVAG, Jason Thigpen, and Hayleigh Perez, a veteran that was denied in-state tuition at University of North Carolina Pembroke while being accepted to Fayetteville State, another university under the University of North Carolina school system, filed the lawsuit claiming negligence and emotional distress.
This was after Thigpen, Perez, her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Jose Perez and a Change.Org representative met with Kevin Fitzgerald, Chief-Of-Staff to the UNC System President, to present the petition that included close to 147,000 signatures.
Fitzgerald was “very understanding and seemed to empathize with the issues,” Thigpen said, but because of “apparent unwillingness to even discuss a settlement,” additional steps had to be taken.
A spokesperson said that the Board of Directors had not been served with or seen a copy of the complaint so they would have no comment at this time.
Nearly 250,000 veterans and service members are each paying an average of $10,000 per academic year out-of-pocket while using the GI Bill to attend a public college or university because of the changes in their educational benefits regarding residency for tuition purposes, according to the Student Veterans Advocacy Group (SVAG).
A recent report by Thigpen claims that only 10 percent of schools in the University of North Carolina school system offered “adequate services, facilities, and resources.”
