Former Student Veterans Association (SVA) president Mike White felt “sick to [his] stomach” upon hearing that the two-year-old Student Veterans Lounge will be demolished along with the rest of South and Southeast Morse Hall in order to align with Kansas Board of Regents’ recommendations about backlog maintenance and campus square-footage.
The Emporia State plans to construct another Veteran’s Lounge in the Memorial Union before the building’s demolition in the spring of 2026.
Completed in late 2021, The Student Veterans Association lounge was a largely student-led effort.
“It wasn’t there very long at all, and for them to do away with it and kind of discard it in such a way so quickly, kind of makes me feel like, why did we go through all the effort?” White said. “I fought four years for it when I was there and for them to do away with it so quickie just, it hurts.”
The roughly $21,000 lounge was financed by a $60,000 donation from the David Woods Kemper Veterans Foundation and another $60,000 from alumni and other donors.
Since its establishment, the SVA lounge has served as a safe space for student veterans to commune with each other and study with fewer stimuli, which can cause veterans anxiety elsewhere on campus.
According to Peter Hauff, Director of Facility Planning at ESU, the University is working alongside the Bloomers to construct a new Veterans Lounge below The Bulletin in the Memorial Union, news that was not dispersed to all benefactors responsible for the current lounge.
“There has been no announcement that they plan on rebuilding,” White said. “I feel like the David Woods Kemper Foundation, the person who ran that, was upset about it and other people who donated to it are upset about it as well.”
The lounge’s relocation to the Memorial Union also surprised White, who was told there wasn’t space for it there in 2019 when the Student Veterans Association sought space on campus for the original lounge.
While White expressed relief at the lounge’s reconstruction, he hopes that the new lounge will remain true to the original intention.
He thinks that the Document of Consortium should be saved and that all furniture should be salvaged. Most of all, White hopes that those involved with planning the new Veterans Lounge will listen to the ideas of current ESU student veterans and take their vision into consideration as it will be their space.
