SUPPORTING THE TROOPS? The University of Michigan residency policy holds overseas military deployments AGAINST veterans in order to make them pay out of state tuition (approximately $10,000/year). Based off their own employee's estimates, U of M is making approx. $3 million a year through this policy. Veterans are being systematically targeted, forced to complete 20 or more pages of paperwork to challenge their "out of state" status and have no way of knowing how the appeals will go. The process is arbitrarily enforced, takes 2-4 months to resolve and in the meantime veterans may be dropped from classes because they can't pay for the out of state tuition (which is not covered by the Post 9/11 GI Bill). In most cases, veterans have to provide their parent's financial and tax information, regardless of whether they are independent or not.

In one case, the residency classification office told a veteran she needed to legally separate from her spouse, who is working out of state to pay for her extra tuition, in order to "cut out-of-state ties" and receive in state tuition.

In another case, they told an Iraq war veteran and Marine Corps Staff Sergeant, who had never left the state of Michigan except for military deployments, that he was an out of state resident because he "left the state of Michigan and went to Iraq for a year."

Do they think Iraq and Afghanistan are military VACATION HOMES? This is outrageous and MUST STOP!

We believe this money is WRONGFULLY earned and NO veteran who serves their NATION should be considered an out of state resident in ANY of the states they defended.  We want to get as many signatures as possible so we can tell the Regents at U of M that the public DOES NOT support this policy.