Nearly half of eligible ex-service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are snubbing free, federal health care they earned in uniform because many harbor “huge mistrust” of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, contends a leading veterans advocacy group.

About 1.5 million men and women who served in those wars have since separated from the U.S. military. Among those eligible to access VA medical help, only 55 percent of veterans have done so through the third quarter of 2012, VA figures show.

“It’s because the VA has a branding problem, an image problem,” said Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA), which has more than 200,000 members.

For many younger veterans, Tarantino said, the issue that has most sullied the VA’s reputation is the average time it takes to complete the disability-compensation claims submitted by wounded veterans. The average wait for that money has grown to 272.3 days, or about nine months, a 10-day increase from early December, according a federal website.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki last year vowed to shrink the so-called “VA backlog” to 125 days by 2015 as the agency finishes transitioning to a digital processing system.

“Any time we ever hear about the VA, what do we hear? That the backlog is astronomically high. Or, that the VA is late in providing GI Bill (tuition) checks. It’s not an antagonistic relationship. It’s: ‘Oh, there goes the VA again; they still don’t have it together.’ Meanwhile, the VA is pathologically incapable of telling its own story,” said Tarantino, who uses a VA medical center. The former Army captain spent time in Iraq, earning the Bronze Star. “The problem is there is a huge mistrust of the VA.

“And what’s unsettling is the VA is an outstanding health care system. But they have not done a good job to explain to the American people what it is they do or offer,” Tarantino added. “This is business 101. You can have the greatest product in the world but if people don’t know about or trust your product, you have a bad product.”

Asked if Tarantino’s assessment is fair, a VA spokesman responded to NBC News with an email listing the agency’s latest work: bolstering mental-health staffers by 49 percent, opening 80 additional clinics, enticing clients through social media, and launching initiatives that allow ex-troops to chat with doctors online or talk with “peer-to-peer specialists” with combat experience.

“Although we have made many improvements, there is still work to do,” read a response emailed by Mark Ballesteros, a VA spokesman. He also cited the VA’s shift to “a new model of health care” called Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT), a “patient-centered, team-based” and “data-driven” system.

Advanced tactics, modern buildings and clever acronyms aside, the VA faces a long, tough sell with its youngest audience, according to interviews with several post-9/11 veterans. 

Pete Chinnici, 26, personifies the type of a public-relations damage VA officials must patch before forging deeper inroads within the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran communities.

After completing Marine Corps duty in Iraq from 2005 to 2007, Chinnici applied for VA health care in Phoenix. He’d been diagnosed with post-combat stress and hearing loss. But six months after stepping inside the pipeline, Chinnici said a VA employee told him his entire medical file was missing and that he’d need to start over.

“After having two friends who went through the VA process – it took one 9 months and the other almost a year (to gain entry) – and then being told they’d lost the paperwork, I never went back,” Chinnici said.

Three time zones east, another Marine, Alex Hill, visited the VA medical center in Brockton, Mass. after exiting Iraq in 2009, he said, “without a scratch.”

“The VA just wasn’t for me: the unmotivated staff members, the piles of bureaucracy,” said Hill, 26. “I also have objections with how they treat veterans by solving every problem they come across with a bottle of pills.”

The VA hopes to win back veterans like Hill and Chinnici, in part, via its 151 Facebook pages (which have more than 623,000 combined “likes”), its 581 posted YouTube videos, its 75 Twitter feeds, and its VAntage Point blog, which offers 500-plus articles authored by VA employees, veterans and family members, said VA spokesman Ballesteros.

“We’re reaching out to provide veterans with more options for care and more access to health care providers than ever,” Ballesteros wrote in the emailed statement. “Now patients can choose to come in for a face-to-face appointment with their doctor or avoid driving long distances, and instead interact with a provider through our (secure, online) telehealth programs.”

More than 380,000 veterans received “telehealth” services during the 2011 fiscal, he added.

But on the primary VA Facebook page that Ballesteros touted, there are many unhappy hints of the agency’s steep climb to win fresh hearts. On Jan. 19, Janet Woodworth Jennings posted there: “Hire VA doctors who actually care and know what they are doing.” Her comment was promptly “liked” by Luanne Pruesner-Van De Velde, who added: “I AGREE...Hire EMPLOYEES that care about Vets - Period!!!”

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Courtesy Hayleigh Perez

Hayleigh Perez, a former Army sergeant who served in Iraq, is pictured with her daughter, Caleigh.

Two student veterans who claim U.S. colleges are profiting from artificially inflated tuition fees by misclassifying the residency status of veterans have filed a federal lawsuit against the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, in part for allegedly engaging in that same practice.

The suit, filed last Thursday in Raleigh, accuses the UNC Board of Governors of discriminating against Iraq War veterans and UNC branch students Hayleigh Perez, 26, and Jason Thigpen, 35, by allegedly failing to provide “adequate services, facilities, resources, and assistance” needed to help the two students transition from war to college.

Perez and Thigpen are seeking $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages from the UNC Board of Governors for allegedly inflicting “profound financial hardship and psychological injuries” to the two veterans within a school system that “advertises and purports itself to be one of the most ‘military friendly’ in the country,” according to the suit. Last month, Perez, who attends UNC Pembroke, became the face of a national, grassroots campaign to stop American universities from stamping student veterans as out-of-state residents — thus forcing them to pay the schools $10,000 more in tuition each academic year — after returning home from combat deployments or other military assignments. (Her Change.org petition asking the UNC System to "stop discriminating against student veterans" has garnered mroe than 147,000 signatures). 

“This is not about money. This is about colleges doing the right thing, doing the legal thing and taking care of these students the way they’re supposed to,” said Thigpen, who attends UNC Wilmington and who has been fighting residency claims for other UNC system student veterans through his organization, the Student Veterans Advocacy Group (SVAG).

UNC officials responded to the suit with an emailed statement: “We believe the University has complied fully with federal and state law and has not discriminated against Ms. Perez or other student veterans.

“To the contrary, UNC has demonstrated a strong commitment to North Carolina's military community,” added Joni Worthington, vice president of communications for the UNC system. “The 2012 UNC Serves Resource Guide provides an extensive campus-by-campus inventory of resources, support staffing, services and initiatives specifically dedicated to support military-affiliated students and their families. We're committed to do even more and continue to make incremental progress as resources allow.”

On Oct. 22, NBC News reported SVAG’s assertion that some 250,000 student veterans — many of them lifelong residents of the states in which they're enrolled — were abruptly dubbed out of-state residents by their colleges and, thus, billed at higher tuition rates, after they were temporarily transferred to other military bases or deployed overseas. The practice has been seen at schools in 38 states, SVAG reported. 

The issue centers on a fundamental change to the GI Bill, enacted last year by Congress, which stripped tuition benefits for veterans who attend public schools and who are categorized as out-of-state students. In-state student veterans enrolled at public institutions remain eligible for full tuition coverage under federal law. 

The student-residency battle “makes up a portion” of the lawsuit, Thigpen said.

But allegations that the UNC system discriminated against Thigpen and Perez are the fundamental underpinnings of the suit, Thigpen added.

In short, the suit describes Thigpen, Perez and other student veterans in the UNC system as a “minority group.” And it alleges that when the plaintiffs each sought assistance from their individual UNC colleges — much like the services and resources provided “to other minority groups such as: African-Americans, LGBT, Hispanics, and women — they’re nearly none offered commensurate with having such high Veteran student populations,” the lawsuit said.

The UNC system included about 10,200 student veterans as of 2011, representing nearly 9 percent of the total undergraduates attending the 16 UNC system schools, according to the lawsuit.

“Had the federal (GI Bill) law not changed last year, would student veterans necessarily have issues with the lack of programs, facilities and resources available for them (in the UNC System)? Yes, they would,” Thigpen said in a phone interview. "But is residency classification one factor that led to this? Definitely.”

When Congress altered the GI Bill and removed tuition coverage for out-of-state residents, that placed a large financial burden on thousands of student veterans, Thigpen said.

Perez, for example, was classified as an out-of-state student by the UNC system after she temporarily accompanied her active-duty husband to Texas following his military transfer. While she was away, Perez said she continued making property tax payments on her North Carolina home. When she returned and enrolled at UNC Pembroke, the school billed her tuition fees at the out-of-state rate, costing her an extra $4,600 for one semester.

“When you have such a drastic change, obviously there’s going to be a much greater need for school services for the thousands of veterans who are attending the UNC system,” Thigpen said. “They are going to need more resources. But by not responding to our numerous requests for changes to the existing veterans’ services, that leads to (our claims of) discrimination and negligence.”

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courtesy of Hayleigh Perez

Hayleigh Perez, a former Army sergeant who served in Iraq, argues that the University of North Carolina system has over-billed by her $4,600 that should have been covered, she contends, by the GI Bill. She is holding her daughter Caleigh.

Some 250,000 student veterans are being forced to pay $10,000 for tuition each academic year because many colleges are misclassifying the residency status of those veterans — often for the schools’ own financial gain — according to a student veterans organization.

The issue centers on a fundamental change to the GI Bill, enacted last year by Congress, which stripped tuition benefits for veterans who attend public schools and who are categorized as out-of-state students. In-state student veterans enrolled at public institutions remain eligible for full tuition coverage under federal law. 

But the financial fallout of the residency crunch is impacting student veterans in about 38 states, including Florida, North Carolina and California, reports the Student Veterans Advocacy Group (SVAG). Many of those same student veterans are lifelong residents of the states in which they’re now enrolled — even owning homes in those states — but their schools stamped them as out-of-state residents after they were temporarily transferred to other military bases, or deployed overseas.

“Many veterans are having to quit school because they can’t afford that $5,000 per semester they have to now pay out of pocket,” said Jason Thigpen, founder and president of SVAG, which is based in North Carolina. Thigpen, a student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is not personally affected by the classification problems. As a U.S. Army sergeant, he earned a Purple Heart medal for combat wounds he sustained in Iraq in 2009.

“This is the first time in the history of the GI Bill that we can’t get the education that we were promised,” Thigpen said. “It’s a debt that’s owed to these services members. Our veterans are just asking what was promised to them — no more, no less.”

Dozens of student veterans, who recently used SVAG to successfully appeal and overturn their out-of-state residency classifications at their colleges, used utility bills and mortgage papers to prove that they are — and have been — living in their home states, Thigpen said.

Despite a similar pile of residency proof, however, student veteran Hayleigh Perez, 26, has failed during several hearings to convince the University of North Carolina that she was fully eligible for GI Bill tuition benefits when she attended UNC Pembroke last spring.

Perez, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2006, legally maintained her residence in Fayetteville, N.C., during a subsequent 15-month deployment to Iraq, she said. When she returned to North Carolina, she got married in that state. In 2008, Perez and her husband bought a home in Hoke County, N.C. and she registered as a voter. In 2009, the U.S. military relocated Perez and her husband to Texas, but the couple continued to pay property taxes on their North Carolina home, she said.

Perez received an honorable discharge from the Army in 2009. Last spring, after her husband was transferred back to North Carolina, Perez enrolled at UNC Pembroke. She was stunned, however, when the school billed her $4,600 for a semester of tuition because she’d been deemed an out-of-state resident — and, thus, ineligible for the GI Bill.

“It is disgraceful,” Perez said. “I was forced to borrow the money for my tuition from family members.”

She filed a grievance with UNC Pembroke, offering as evidence of her residency the property records, her marriage license and her North Carolina voter ID. The school denied her appeal, she said. She ultimately took her case leaders of the UNC school system in Chapel Hill — and met with UNC officials yet again last Tuesday with Thigpen at her side. Once more, she said, her claim was denied. (While the UNC school system is headquartered Chapel Hill, Perez's claim does not involve the system's flagship college, UNC-Chapel Hill). 

NBC News asked UNC to address Perez’s assertion that she should be classified by the school system as an in-state resident. Laura B. Fjeld, a UNC vice president and general counsel, e-mailed a response: “We are not at liberty to offer any details in connection with the case of Ms. Perez because of the privacy protections afforded her under FERPA (the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act).”

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, there are about 5,000 additional student veterans like Perez who are wrongly classified by their colleges as out-of-state residents — and many of those take classes within the UNC system, Thigpen contends. He has personally represented 32 of those students during their hearings to overturn their residency classifications, winning each case, he said. 

courtesy of Hayleigh Perez

Student veteran Hayleigh Perez now attends Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. Since spring, she's battled the University of North Carolina to reimburse her for $4,600 in tuition she argues she never should have paid under the GI Bill.

On that point, Fjeld responded: “We believe that the (North Carolina) State Residency Manual which governs classification of residency for tuition purposes, is consistent with state and federal law.”

“This isn’t just North Carolina, though,” Perez said. “This has become an issue nationally. People are serving multiple deployments, and to face these kinds of hardships when they get home is crazy.”

Perez knows well the scope of the issue. She posted an online petition at change.org, asking the “UNC Board of Governors” to “Stop Discriminating Against Student Veterans.” Within the petition, she also revealed her situation, point by point. As of Monday evening, more than 143,000 supporters had signed the petition — including people who said they are student veterans experiencing the same residency problems — and tuition bills — in Virginia, Florida and other states.

Why are some colleges such sticklers on the residency disputes filed by student veterans, forcing many to pay out-of-state tuition fees even though they reside in the same state?

If a public college agrees with a student’s assertion that he or she is an in-state resident and, consequently, allowed to attend school tuition-free on the GI bill, the federal government then directly sends the school that tuition payment — in North Carolina, that’s $5,000, on average, per academic year at public institutions, Thigpen said.

If the school holds fast to its ruling that a student veteran should be classified as an out-of-state enrollee, the student must pay the school out of pocket for tuition — in North Carolina, that’s $16,000, on average, per academic year at public colleges, Thigpen said.

“When you multiply that $11,000 difference over just say 5,000 to 10,000 student veterans who are affected by this,” Thigpen said, “you’re talking about over $100 million a year.”

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The insult expressed in the Rutgers University class was aimed at the nearly 1 million veterans enrolled at U.S. schools under the GI Bill. And Scott Hakim, barely a year removed from combat, took the slam personally.

“Why should we pay for these guys to go to college?” Hakim said he recalls a female student asking during a discussion on the nation’s responsibility to service members returning from war.  “Everybody who goes into the military is stupid – that’s why they joined the military instead of going to college.”

John Agnello Photography

Scott Hakim, a Marine infantryman in combat, now attends Rutgers University. The school has a military-friendly reputation. But even there, Hakim says he heard another student bash enrolled veterans. Hakim at a recent wedding with girlfriend Emma Valenti.

Hakim – a Marine infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan – immediately vowed to out-study every classmate on the midterm exam and said he ultimately posted the highest mark: 98 out of 100. Later, he said, he overheard that same female student reveal her grade: F. 

“I guess I proved her wrong,” Hakim said. “It wasn't a me-versus-her thing, more like: Maybe now she realizes how idiotic her statement was.”

Anti-veteran sentiments – though sporadic and scattered – are nonetheless emerging at some American colleges just as thousands of veterans enroll with their tuition fees fully covered by the post-9/11 GI Bill. In student gatherings or via anonymous posts in online forums, some university students are expressing open disdain for former service members now massing in academia.

Student Veterans of America, a support network with more than 500 campus chapters, acknowledges the presence of some unwelcoming vibes. “It exists,” said Michael Dakduk, executive director of SVA. “But, by and large, college students respect the sacrifices made by those who have served in the military.”

At Columbia University in New York City, a wounded Iraq War veteran was heckled and booed in February by fellow students as he argued for the return to that school of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, during a campus meeting. That reaction angered the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who openly questioned the school’s leadership.

At the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, student veteran Jason Thigpen said he has “personally experienced what seems to be ‘anti-veteran’ sentiment on more than a few occasions.”

Courtesy of Scott Hakim

Scott Hakim served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and again in Afghanistan, where he was wounded by an IED in 2010.

“I had a History 101 professor in 2011 actually refer to how much better he was than military service members,” said Thigpen, an Army National Guard member who served in Iraq through January 2010. The UNC “system seems to disregard us in such a widespread manner, most student veterans no longer bother to even admit their time in-service, which is just sad.”

UNC, Wilmington spokeswoman Janine Iamunno responded: "UNC Wilmington proudly offers veterans, active-duty members of the military, and their families several programs and resources to support their unique educational needs. This is an extension of our commitment to  the journey of learning, and to the premium we place on an open dialogue between faculty and students about the opportunities and challenges we face individually and as a community."

At Rutgers, meanwhile, there is irony attached to the unfriendly dig uttered in one of Hakim’s classes. That sort of behavior is well out of the norm, he said: “Other than that one time, Rutgers has been absolutely amazing.” In Afghanistan, Hakim’s vehicles ran over and detonated five IEDs. On a sixth occasion, he stepped on an IED, sustaining a traumatic brain injury. “If I have to miss a class (due to the injury), my professors are accommodating. The whole school itself is great with veterans.”

"Rutgers, like the rest of the country, has successfully been able to separate the warrior from the war," said Steve Abel, a retired Army colonel and director of the office of veteran military programs and services at Rutgers.

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"I was on a college campus around the time of (the) Kent State (shootings). I'm a product of the Vietnam era. So when I was driving here (a couple of years ago to start the job), I wondered: What is Rutgers going to be like from a staff and student body perspective, being a big and liberal university?" Abel said. "Any apprehension I had about that relationship absolutely dissolved when I got here. They could not have been more welcoming to me, my team and to the student veterans here."

In fact, Rutgers was rated a “military friendly” school in the 2013 “G.I. Jobs” list of colleges where veterans feel appreciated and have an array of academic and social help available.

Last month, when NBC News reported on the latest list of “military friendly” schools, several readers offered comments via newsvine.com that derided the nation's newest veterans.

“This post-9/11 love affair with the military is disgusting. Paying people to illegally invade other countries and kill innocent men, women and children is immoral. Screw the military,” wrote a reader who calls herself OVUgirl.

“I have to agree with OVUgirl. Seeing the immoral military glorified on campus is disgusting,” wrote another reader who uses the newsvine handle Gandhi Fan.

Through newsvine, NBC News asked both of those readers to elaborate on their comments for this story. Neither responded.

“I don’t think you’ll see (those types of feelings expressed) as overtly on the ground at college campuses,” said SVA leader Dakduk. “But ... you can say things anonymously online – you can say pretty much everything – so that’s where you’ll see it most.”

Another leading veterans group suspects that some student veterans who blatantly grab GI Bill money with no plans to actually sit in a college classroom are further fueling that ill will.

Under the post-9/11 GI Bill, the federal government directly reimburses colleges for a veteran’s tuition fees. In addition, each student veteran receives a housing allowance that, depending on the university’s zip code, can run as high as $2,040 per month if the veteran has dependents. They also each get $1,000 annually for books and supplies.

“What happens is that too many of the people get the GI Bill and don’t go to class. They spend the money elsewhere and the college has to cut them loose,” said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus, a nonprofit that has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. 

“That’s one of the issues that kind of took us by surprise,” he added. “When we go to these colleges and ask: How can we help? That’s one of the things we hear from the student advisers: ‘Look, I’ve got kids who come here and enroll to get their GI Bill and they end up not going to school.' 

“Unfortunately," Pickens said, "you have some folks who game the system." 

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