To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Frank, and I live in Oxford House–Thomas II in Manassas, Virginia. Oxford Houses are democratically self-governing and self-supporting under the Oxford House system of operations.

I moved into Oxford House in 2007. During that time, I returned to school and attended classes at NOVA. I graduated with an associate degree in 2012 and, under the GAA agreement, was accepted to George Mason University in 2015. I graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics.

After graduation, I applied to graduate school as a master’s student. I was accepted and offered a Teaching Assistant (TA) position, which is not usually offered to master’s students. I worked hard, maintained my TA position, and graduated with my master’s degree in 2022. I then applied for admission as a Ph.D. student and was admitted.

I am currently working as a TA, where I help others learn physics, and I am conducting research in the neurophysics field, where I am developing a model that explains metabolic processes in the hippocampus, a region of the brain implicated in seizures.

None of this would have been possible without Oxford House. My housemates have supported me throughout my journey, both personally and academically. Oxford House has not only saved my life when I had nowhere else to turn, but it has also given me a new sense of purpose.

I hope to become a tenured professor when I graduate. I support rules that keep people safe, but rules that require staff or assume every home is a commercial business would prevent Oxford Houses from operating in Virginia, even though research shows that our model achieves the best results.