This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Emma Costanzo was on the phone with her mom when she got the December email from a Christopher Newport University official: She was ineligible for a Virginia-specific benefit designed for certain veteran families.
“This was money that was guaranteed for me,” Costanzo, a freshman studying kinesiology there, told VPM News.
The VMSDEP stipend is part of the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program — but is separate from the tuition and fees waiver. It’s reserved for the dependents of qualifying veterans with a combat-related disability or death.
Costanzo’s father served in Iraq from 2003 to 2005 and as a result is a 100% permanent and totally disabled Army veteran.
That’s why when Costanzo saw the email, it felt like a “hit in the chest.” She wondered: “How could I possibly be ineligible?”
Emma and her mother, Stacey Costanzo, had been going back and forth with the university for months this past fall trying to get clarity about when the stipend would be awarded.
“It is very frustrating to have to fight for something that was promised to you,” said Emma Costanzo. “We’re trying to do it the right way, and we’re not getting what we were guaranteed, what we were promised.”
According to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia guidance, the stipend is usually put toward a student’s room and board. It’s supposed to be awarded every semester, but the fall semester came and went, and there was no word about Costanzo’s stipend.
As a result, she’s been regularly borrowing money from her mom to help pay for groceries, books and other expenses.
In early December 2024, CNU financial aid coordinator Alban Barker emailed Costanzo to tell her she was now ineligible for the stipend. In the email, Barker stated this was because a federal veteran benefit was being applied toward her total cost of attendance.
The federal veteran benefit Barker referenced is called “Chapter 35,” a monthly stipend that goes directly into qualifying individuals’ bank accounts to cover an array of educational expenses.
That’s why federal financial aid rules state that the Chapter 35 stipend — along with other federal veterans’ education benefits — should be excluded when colleges calculate what need-based federal aid students are eligible for.
But Barker pointed to recent SCHEV guidance — now updated — explaining that veteran benefits should be included in the cost of attendance calculation.
In a follow-up email to Costanzo on Jan. 17, Barker wrote that “what we are awaiting is for SCHEV to release an update.”
‘There’s some room for further guidance’
Last week, the state agency changed its guidance to remove the phrase “veteran’s benefits,” clarifying that Chapter 35 benefits shouldn’t count toward a student’s cost of attendance.
Lee Andes, SCHEV’s director of finance policy, told VPM News the old fact sheet was “not consistent with the federal treatment of veterans’ benefits. So, I felt like I had to change that.”
Andes said the discovery was made amid a related effort to produce a guiding document — in conjunction with the state Department of Veteran Services — on administering the VMSDEP tuition waiver program.
The entire VMSDEP program has been in the spotlight over the past year, ever since lawmakers made programmatic changes they later rolled back after pressure from military families.
Andes said he became aware last fall of concerns about how the VMSDEP waiver and stipend were being administered.
“I found out enough to feel like ‘OK, looks like there’s room for some further guidance,’ even though a lot of the issues were anecdotal,” Andes said.
That guidance is in its final stages of review and should be finalized soon, according to Andes.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear how many students — at CNU and other Virginia colleges and universities — have been impacted because of how SCHEV’s old stipend guidance has been interpreted.
CNU’s chief communications officer Jim Hanchett did not respond to specific questions from VPM News about how long the guidance interpretation had been in effect; how many students were impacted this year — and in prior years — by the application of Chapter 35 benefits toward cost of attendance calculations; and what was being done to address the situation.
Hanchett wrote in an email statement that “we support and celebrate this program. We follow all state regulations and policies regarding its application with our students.”
He added that SCHEV’s updated guidance “has remedied the situation.”
According to publicly available SCHEV data, 220 CNU students were awarded a VMSDEP tuition waiver in the 2023-24 school year — and 129 awarded a stipend.
Daniel Gade, a retired Army veteran and a member of CNU’s Board of Visitors, told VPM News last week that the college’s financial aid office was reaching out to all students who didn’t qualify for the full VMSDEP stipend. He said he was told the department would explain what’s happening and “what they’re intending to do about, essentially, back adjustments to make sure it’s right, retroactively.”
He added that CNU President William Kelly — a retired U.S. Coast Guard admiral — “has made it clear to me, and to everybody else, that CNU is and will remain a veteran-friendly school … . [T]he issue in question here is essentially a bureaucratic one.”
According to Andes, funding is only available to address retroactive stipend awards for this year — not further back.
“If someone didn't get an award this year, then absolutely we can make that correction and try to make sure they get the money for this year,” Andes said. “But we wouldn't have any funds to go to prior years.”
He said that’s because of limited state funding for the stipends that’s run out before. When Andes realized funding would run out again this year, SCHEV requested an additional $9.4 million across the biennium — for a total of nearly $29 million just for the stipend.
The VMSDEP stipend awards are based on available funding and subject to changes made by SCHEV; the tuition waiver is mandated by state law.
‘No uniformity across the university system’
VPM News reached out to a handful of colleges to see how they’d been interpreting SCHEV’s old stipend guidance.
James Madison University, Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Virginia Military Institute all confirmed they haven’t been applying Chapter 35 benefits toward a student’s cost of attendance calculation.
Stacey Costanzo, Emma’s mom, said one of her sons has been receiving the VMSDEP stipend at VCU without “any issue.” The same goes for Stacey herself, who has been studying at James Madison University.
She did say the awards generally come well into the semester and sometimes toward the end. SCHEV states that they request disbursement of the stipend funds 4-6 weeks into the term. According to JMU, funds aren’t applied to a student’s account until 12-16 weeks in.
“Mine is a partial stipend due to being a part-time student, while my older son gets $950 each semester,” Costanzo said.
State law allows for annual stipend awards of up to $2,200; the average annual award for CNU students in the 2023-24 academic year was $1,683.
Jenna Rowe, whose husband is a retired Marine who became disabled during a 2008 deployment to Afghanistan, said her daughters in school at VCU and Radford University also haven’t had issues receiving the stipend. She still wishes stipends would come earlier in the semester.
Last fall, her daughter at Radford had a check in her campus mailbox waiting for her when she returned from Thanksgiving break. At the same time, Rowe said her daughter at VCU had a fall stipend applied toward her spring housing balance since she was living on campus.
“There's no uniformity across the university system about the stipend and how they're applying it,” Rowe said. “We have to prepay all of her room and board, so anything that's extra comes out of our pocket until my daughter gets her stipend.”
Rowe, who’s on the leadership team of Friends of VMSDEP, said “we want the program to be administered correctly … and we want everyone to be accountable.”
Emma recently received an email from Brittany Grubb, acting director of financial aid for CNU.
“SCHEV has provided revised guidance, and we are now able to certify your eligibility for the full stipend,” Grubb’s email stated.
But for Emma, it’s too little, too late. She’s already made the decision to transfer to another university this fall.
“At this point, I have reached a breaking point and I am ready to go,” Costanzo said. “My next plan — my next move — is to go somewhere that will support me to get my education.”
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