“I Just Don’t Like to Have My Car Marked”: Nuancing Identity Attachments and Belonging in Student Veterans

Student adjustment to college has a significant impact on retention and degree completion (Credé & Niehorster, 2012; Gerdes & Mallinckrodt, 1994; Gray et al., 2013). This adjustment involves a number of factors beyond academics and includes psychological, personal, emotional, and social components (Chickering, 1969). Students’ sense of belonging is one particularly critical component as they engage themselves in the various intellectual and social aspect of college life (Bowman et al., 2019; Freeman et al., 2007; Zumbrunn et al., 2014). Bowman et al. (2019) explain, “[t] hese students’ college experiences then shape their sense of belonging, institutional commitment, and/or academic achievement, which then lead to persistence intentions and decisions” (p. 275). Belonging, however, does not just happen or not happen; belonging evolves along a spectrum, responsive to individual experiences and subject to changes in a student’s dispositions and identities. While forming an initial sense of belonging is important to college students’ early adjustment experiences, maintaining that sense of belonging is just as imperative for persistence and degree completion. For veterans entering or reentering college, feelings of belonging are especially important to college adjustment (Bagby et al., 2015; Eakman et al., 2019; Elliott et al., 2011; Livingston et al., 2011; McAndrew et al., 2019). In the last decade, higher education scholars, educators, and administrators have learned a great deal about supporting student veterans’ adjustment and belonging. Some research has examined the transitional experiences of student veterans through the filter of the potential challenges they may bring with them—particularly combat and trauma exposure as well as visible and invisible injuries and disabilities— and how those challenges might serve as obstacles to their adjustment, their academic success, their persistence, and their degree attainment (Eakman et al., 2019; Ness et al., 2015; Schonfeld et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2017; Wagner & Long, 2020; Young, 2017). Alternatively, recent research has focused more on investigating student veteran resilience, RESEARCH