Parents

Director's Letter to Parents

18 Jun 25

Dear Parent/Sponsor,

It is with great honor and pleasure that I and the entire Veteran and Military Services (VMS) team welcome your student to Ole Miss! They've certainly chosen an incredible university to attend. Our team is excited to have them here and will do everything we can to ensure they're taken care of. As a USAF retiree and father of a student here at Ole Miss myself, I understand the need to gain insight into the required process used to get benefits processed through the VA as soon as possible.

To best take care of your student and the other 3,000+ military connected students we serve to our full capacity, we need your help and understanding. If you've been to an Orientation event here and attended the VMS breakout session, you've likely heard me tell you the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) no longer considers you the owner of the educational benefit your student will apply toward tuition at Ole Miss. Once the student claims the benefit you've given them and receives a Certificate of Eligibility (COE) for said benefit from the VA, the VA is no longer able to discuss particulars about your student's education benefit with you. The VA will answer general questions at surface-level only. Anything deeper will require your student to call personally in for additional information.

The VMS office must/will adhere to that same guidance due to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations. My request to you: Please understand we are NOT employees of the VA. We liaison between your student and the VA and then VA and Ole Miss as University of Mississippi employees. If you call our office, please understand we are prohibited from discussing matters related to your student's file with you. We can only speak to your student regarding their benefits and file maintained within our office. Once documentation is submitted to the VA on behalf of your student from our office, we will not have any visibility on when the benefit will pay out. At that point, it is in the VA queue for disbursement and that is all we know. Most importantly, please understand all inquiries related to VA benefits MUST come directly from your student's Ole Miss email only — there will be NO EXCEPTIONS to this policy.

Our team is here to help your student have the best possible experience at Ole Miss. If they are experiencing an issue with their registration, have delay in payment disbursement, or have other questions/concerns, please have them visit our office in person with their laptop as soon as possible so we can investigate the issue with them.

If you have any questions or concerns with this memo, please feel free to reach out to us via our org box email at: veterans@olemiss.edu. We will do whatever we can to assist you, but keep in mind there will be limitations on what we are able to say/do without your student physically in our office. We look forward to assisting your student through their Ole Miss experience and beyond!

            
JEREMEE J. ALEXANDER
Director, Veteran & Military Services