Sunday, February 25th, 2007...8:11 pm
Be It Ever So Humble…
Way back in nineteen-hundred and eighty-six, I was a volunteer for Richard Kimball, who was running a kamikaze campaign for US Senate against a two term congressman from Phoenix named, um…it’s on the tip of my tongue. Oh yeah, John McCain.
Kimball was a umpteenth generation Arizonan (his ancestors included Mormon pioneer Heber Kimball), and saw his roots as an electoral advantage over McCain, who was seen by some as a carpetbagger. In a debate, Kimball brought up McCain’s relatively short time in Arizona. McCain pointed out that throughout his military career, he moved around an awful lot so the place he lived the longest was the Hanoi Hilton.
Needless to say, that arrow was no longer in Kimball’s quiver.
People in the military move around often and some would be hard pressed to name any particular spot as their home state. This has some unintended policy consequences.
Yesterday I met a fella named Paul Metcalf. Metcalf just recently separated from the United States Marine Corps. After leaving home in New Jersey, he attended boot camp, was stationed in Japan, spent seven months in Iraq (which he humbly states was “behind the wire,” but more dangerous than anything I’ve been doing all that time), but the longest place he was planted was here in Arizona, at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma.
In the meantime, his parents had moved from New Jersey, which apparently removed his right to declare that state home when he applied at Rutgers University. He was able to apply at the University of Arizona. He assumed that his two and a half years here, the longest he had been anywhere in his adult life, would qualify him as “in state” when it came to tuition.
It didn’t. For someone to qualify as in-state, they have to live here for one year with an intent to domicile. For some reason, they either did not count his time stationed here towards that year or they don’t believe that people in the military have an “intent to domicile.”
Given how many people who have been stationed in Arizona stick around (Exhibit A: my father), it seems silly to assume that they will not “domicile” here. Not only that, given the complications a military career presents, some accomodation should be made in the “in state” requirements.
There is an appeal process, but it seems to me that veterans are deserving of a break from yet more bureaucratic BS. Besides, they make really good students.
3 Comments
February 25th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
That’s horrible! Does he know a state rep that can help him??
February 25th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
25 or so years ago, the daughter of my mom’s best friend was classified as an out of state resident by the U, in spite of the fact that the girl had lived all of her life in AZ, had graduated from Catalina HS. ALL because her father had left the family a couple of years before and moved to California.
Greed, another University Tradition
February 26th, 2007 at 9:29 am
If only he had come to the country illegally….
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