Friday, November 11, 2011
Student Union Cafeteria
8 a.m. -  close of ceremony (approximately 5:00 p.m.)

Following the 10th anniversary of September 11 tragedy, the University of Alaska Anchorage has joined a nationwide grass-roots effort to honor American service men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past decade.

On Veterans Day, Friday, Nov. 11, campus and community volunteers at more than 100 college and universities across the nation will read the names of the 6,200-plus casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF), now called Operation New Dawn.

Each campus participating in Remembrance Day National Roll Call will organize its own reading of names and will observe at 11 a.m. PST (10 AST) a simultaneous nationwide minute of silence.  Currently more than 117 schools in 43 states plus the District of Columbia have agreed to participate in the event.

The Remembrance Day National Roll Call is sponsored nationally by the Veterans Knowledge Community of NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. NASPA is a 12,000-member association for the advancement, health, and sustainability of the student affairs professionals. The Veterans Knowledge Community (VKC) mission is to advocate for best practices to help student veterans transition to college and succeed. As the National Roll Call sponsor, the goal of VKC is to have at least one institution in each of the 50 states participate in the event.

Lt. Col. (Ret) Brett Morris, the National Roll Call coordinator, said, “We wanted to rally campus communities across the nation to send a powerful message to the troops currently serving that their peers have not forgotten their sacrifices, or those of the fallen.”

“The reading of individual names is very poignant because it emphasizes the significance of each and every life lost,” said Morris, a retired Army officer and the associate director for veterans affairs at Eastern Kentucky University.  “Like the names inscribed at the new 9-11 Memorial in New York, each of the fallen deserve to be remembered for their sacrifice. There is no effort to raise money or promote individual programs. The event is simply to honor those who have sacrificed so much on our behalf.”

Please contact the Student Veterans Association at vets_of_uaa@yahoo.com or visit their website: http://life.uaa.alaska.edu/ for additional information.

At this time the sign-up is closed. If you would like to be a reader, please join us at the ceremony that will begin at 8:00 a.m. and end around 5:00 p.m. The ceremony will be held in the Student Union, South Cafeteria. We are especially looking for readers from 12:00 p.m. until the end of the ceremony. Thank you for your support.