If You Build It, Will They Come?

Roger L. Perkins directs the Veterans Support Center at the University of Utah. He’s had bedrooms that are bigger than his campus office, whose paper-thin walls make it easy for a sobbing student to be overheard next door. Is the space sufficient? “Not in the least,” Perkins says. But it speaks to Perkins’s larger struggle. In his plight to set up a hub for veterans at Utah (the support center opened in May 2011), Perkins dealt with shaky support on all sides: an administration that underestimated the investment, and student veterans who weren’t exactly champing at the bit to talk with him.