Serviceperson in front of Howard University sign/Photo courtesy of Military.com
Christopher Rhone, the Howard University official responsible for mishandling the GI Bill certification for students, has resigned.
Military.com first reported the school’s problems with processing GI Bill benefits earlier in August after a student came forward to speak about her experience trying to get the certification process completed. The situation was so disorganized that the student ended up losing her home.
For well over a year, Howard University engaged
in a series of clerical errors, mistakes and general mismanagement that led to the Veterans Administration pulling the school’s GI Bill staus until they cleaned up their administrative fracas. The revocation began on June 15 and ran for 60 days.Howard officials blamed regulators for not giving school officials sufficient warning of changing recertification standards. The school was the only college in the D.C. area to be suspended, however.
Almost 60 students petitioned the school to waive tuition and fees for three semesters because of its failure affected their ability to cover tuition, books and materials, and living expenses.
To solve the problems that the school caused, they offered $3,000 no-interest loans to student veterans whose education was in peril. The loans came with a December 14 repayment date. However, that was not a feasible solution because they would need access to the very benefits that the school had mismanaged– to pay the loan back.
Further, several students reached out to Mililary.com to report that the school had not even notified them of the loan program.
The veteran coordinator, Rhone, resigned from his position less than two weeks after the news outlet published its investigative reports into the issue. In his role, he was the middle man between the Veterans Administration and student veterans.
Frank Tramble, a Howard spokesperson, has claimed that Rhone’s resignation had nothing to do with the publication’s investigations and media coverage.
The Protect the GI Bill Act that was passed in January aimed to weed out the type of mismanagement at Howard.
The school’s suspension ended on August 14.