Military veterans studying at St. Thomas will have the opportunity to experience healing through art therapy in an early step toward making St. Thomas the top veteran friendly school in the Midwest.

On May 19, the Ars Bellum Foundation, a veteran founded company that brings clinical art therapy to veterans, will hold an informational event at 6 p.m. in McNeely Hall, room 100 to expose the St. Thomas community to the practice and benefits of art therapy for veterans working through trauma. Student leader of the St. Thomas Veterans Association, junior Peter Watson, said he hopes bringing the Ars Bellum Foundation to campus will not only help St. Thomas veterans but will spur further veteran support initiatives on campus.

“This event is the first step towards that,” Watson said. “I think for veterans like myself or veterans in general, it’s another resource in our toolbox that is able to help us navigate and deal with the experiences that we had while we were in [the military].”

Watson, 25, enlisted in the Marine Corps six days after he graduated high school and served in a Marine Expeditionary Unit for two deployments over four and a half years before leaving the military in November 2014, and enrolling at St. Thomas to study finance.

“When I started here, I didn’t really know any of the veterans in the area, and when I came on campus … I thought I was maybe like one of a dozen veterans, when in fact that semester there was about 202,” Watson said. “They weren’t highlighting it, you know, I had no idea there was a club or anything.”

There was in fact a club, but for years it had been dormant and was facing probation for failing to meet standard club requirements such as logging community service hours. That’s when the previous student leader, who was graduating, approached Watson and asked him to take over.

“They said they needed to fill officer positions within the club, so I said ‘Well I guess I will give it a shot,’ and that was kind of the start of it. … I worked with them to kind of help bring it back from the depths, and I’ve been very involved in that.”

To bring it out of the depths, Watson followed the former club leader, Josh Herman’s lead. The first step was to clear the club from probation, which meant getting enough campus veterans together to meet those community service hours to start.

“It’s been arduous, that’s for sure,” Watson said. “The biggest thing was getting off of probation and we had that semester to do it.”

Rather than simply raking leaves or collecting garbage, Watson and the Veteran Association decided to make their community service hours count even more by serving other local veteran support institutions, like the Minneapolis Veterans Home for elderly veterans.

“So we went there and we kind of hung out with them, talked to them, decorated, put up Christmas trees,” Watson said. “It was actually really awesome. They were pretty happy to see us … younger guys coming.”

It was during this process of gathering campus veterans for service hours and bonding with older veterans that Watson saw a need beyond a veterans club on campus.

“From my own personal experience leaving the military, the biggest thing that veterans struggle with is that loss of camaraderie,” Watson said. “I just spent four and a half, or eight [years] or however long with my best friends. Living, breathing, eating; everything right there with them. So coming back into that regular world seems rather daunting and you lose it.”

Currently, there are 182 veterans enrolled at St. Thomas, but only a fraction are actively engaged in the Veterans Association. Watson doesn’t want to pressure anyone to join, but thinks of the group as a support system that’s there when they need it.

Watson has made it his goal to not only reinvigorate the St. Thomas Veterans Association, but to bring back that sense of camaraderie to veterans on campus. One step toward doing this is to create a veterans center on campus to be a “place veterans can call home” where they can share experiences with like-minded people who have been there and understand.

“The essence of that is building a community of veterans here, connecting each other and kind of getting behind one banner,” Watson said. “When you’re in the military, you’re exactly that. You’re behind one banner. You’re all pledged to a flag or to a unit. Bringing back that sense of camaraderie is one of the biggest intangible things that would contribute to that.”

St. Thomas is already designated as a military-friendly university by militaryfriendly.com, but opening a veteran center on campus would just be the first step toward becoming the most military friendly university in the Midwest. Though St. Thomas meets all the militaryfriendly.com standards, it is surpassed by several other Minnesota schools that are ranked as far exceeding the standards such as the University of Minnesota’s Graduate program.

Right now, bringing in groups like the Ars Bellum Foundation is going to start forming what Watson hopes will be a strong base of support for veterans at St. Thomas. The May 19 event is free open to all, whether veterans seeking healing, or traditional students and faculty members interested in learning more about veteran support.

“There’s a lot of stigma with student veterans, especially ones who suffer from ailments from their experiences,” Watson said. “I think exposing them to this and ways to help them and just hearing them out, talking to them, just knowing about them is the biggest contribution.”

The Ars Bellum Foundation is the perfect place to start, especially when trying to reach recent veterans who are pursuing an education after the military.

“The VA, as great as it is, is very convoluted, and it is a lot of red tape so going directly to an outside organization … an alternative to the VA [Veteran Affairs] is a very great thing for them to have,” Watson said.

His ambition to increase St. Thomas’ status in the veteran community has been met with support from university administration including President Julie Sullivan, Watson said.

“We were .. looking for ways, saying ‘OK, how does that happen? What would that look like?’ and one of the big things was partnerships with and connecting with outside organizations … bringing those outside people in and contributing to the community as a whole,” Watson said.

Simeon Lancaster can be reached at lanc4637@stthomas.edu

Lauren Knisley contributed to this report.