The director of the VA Medical Center (VAMC) in Tucson, Arizona, has mandated that all conference rooms be reserved by authorized VA staff members. This policy essentially bans all Non-Christian Veterans from using the "Chapel and Conference Room" since there are only Christian VA chaplains on staff at this VAMC who can reserve this room. When the "Chapel and Conference Room" is not being used for worship, it is locked up or used by other VA staff members for their meetings. I use the phrase “Chapel and Conference Room” because that is the title given to this room in the blueprint I have provided.



The First Amendment to the United States Constitution mandates that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" The religious needs of Veterans who are enrolled at the VA in Tucson are therefore not being equally accommodated by Congress, the governmental body that sets the budget for the VA and therefore ostensibly condones this restrictive at best and prejudicial at worst policy. This conference room reservation policy should have never been applied to this VAMC chapel in the first place. A chapel is not a conference room.



This conference room reservation policy violates VHA Directive 1111 (July 21, 2021), Chapter 9, a. (6), which states that: "Chapels must remain available at all times for use by Veterans and their families." The other VAMCs in Arizona, which are in Phoenix and Prescott, abide by this VHA Directive. Making the "Chapel and Conference Room'' a room that can only be reserved by authorized VA staff members and locking that room up when it is not in use meets the needs of Tucson’s VAMC upper management, not the needs of Veterans and their families. This policy contradicts the purported mission of the VA, which is to be "Veteran-centric."



This “Chapel and Conference Room” is used for less than four hours on Sunday morning as a chapel during the week. Four hours equates to 2.4 % of a week. In the other 97.6 % of the week, it is treated as a conference room by VA staff. Why do Veterans and their families get the extremely short end of the stick in this so-called "dual purpose" deal? Worse still, Non-Christians get absolutely no access to their chapel.



Veterans bled and died so that all Americans could have their religious freedoms protected and preserved, yet, when it comes to Tucson's VAMC conference room reservation policy, Veterans and their families have to make do with “meditation rooms,” which are ineptly repurposed waiting rooms. The "Chapel and Conference Room" at the Tucson VAMC has a vestry, an altar, a massive church organ, and a chancel, which makes this space distinctively a chapel, not a conference room.



The Director of Tucson’s VAMC offers “meditation rooms” as a viable substitute for Veterans and their families for not having chapel “access at all times.” Why provide such a shoddily repurposed substitute when the genuine article is available at this VAMC campus, especially when there are over sixty plus other conference rooms for upper management to use? I deduce from this callousness that VA management at this federal facility do not have the best interests of their Veterans and their families at heart. Tucson’s VAMC is a top-tier VA Medical Center that receives over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money annually in order to provide healthcare for over 170,000 Veterans and yet upper management acts like they don’t have the resources to properly honor this small but significant privilege.



During my entire military career as a USAF chaplain, my commanders never let their staff or anyone else use the chapel as anything but a chapel. The chapel was treated as a sacred space for all faiths. Even in Afghanistan, when we had nothing but a tent as a chapel, that tent was sacrosanct and treated accordingly. Meeting the spiritual needs of those who “...have borne the battle…” (President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in 1865) should not be relegated to mediocre “meditation rooms,” not when there is a perfectly furnished chapel available on campus. Veterans and their families deserve the best.



This Southern Arizona VA Healthcare System or SAVAHCS conference room policy: 1) violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; 2) violates a VHA Directive by restricting and prohibiting Veterans and their families from having access to their chapel; 3) contradicts the VA mission of being Veteran-centric; 4) makes Tucson's VAMC an outlier among all the other Arizona VAMCs as far as chapel access is concerned; 5) promotes Christian Nationalism because Non-Christian Veterans have no access to their chapel whatsoever; 6) offers a substandard solution in the form of subpar “meditation rooms” even when there is a perfectly functioning chapel on campus; and 7) unethically justifies upper management’s “dual usage” of the “Chapel and Conference Room” in spite of the fact there is no shortage of conference rooms. In fact SAVAHCS has over sixty conference rooms, many of which are underused. I know this to be true because I worked at SAVAHCS as a chaplain for ten years.



Another issue: There are six inch steps in the chancel and vestry areas of the Tucson VA Medical Center that make it unsafe for those who have ambulatory challenges and wish to participate in worship. This violation is covered in multiple, federally mandated regulations for VA hospitals. I have complained repeatedly to the Congressional Oversight Committee, the VA OIG, and the OSC. Nothing has been done so far to make the chancel and vestry areas safe for those with ambulatory challenges. VHA Directive 1111 (July 21, 2021), Chapter 9, a. (4 ) states that “All spaces to be used for spiritual purposes must be fully accessible to persons with disabilities.” Upper management keeps saying that the audience area of the chapel is level and presents no violation. What upper management, the VA OIG, and the Office of Special Counsel doesn’t understand is that Veterans and their families set up, participate, and neutralize worship services, both in the chancel and vestry areas.