Here is the real deal as related by the Human Resources Command (HRC). The commissioning process starts after you have been offered and accepted the scholarship. In the recent past it has been at this point that the selected individual names were placed on the scroll and forwarded to Sec Def. There has been a change, whereby the recruiters in the field are now allowed send the name forward for the scroll upon initial contact. The word on this change has been slow getting to the individual recruiters in the field.
At any point after the scroll comes back, the oath of office can be administered. You do not need NAC to come back.
Enter the Security Office at HRC. Because the Accessions Branch at HRC was allowing for students to be appointed (hence paid) without a security clearance, they ended up with an extraordinary amount of students each year who did not have a clearance. 99.9% of the time it was because the student was fingerprinted at the time the scroll went forward, and the SF86 was completed at the time of the oath or some such. Unfortunately, the fingerprints have an expiration date of 30 days. So, the fingerprints go to OPM, sit in a holding bin until day 31 and then are discarded. On day 33 the SF86 shows up at OPM, and gets put into a holding bin waiting for fingerprints that have been discarded and on day 31, it gets discarded. OPM in its almighty wisdom doesn’t inform HRC or the recruiter of either action. Now the security office at HRC tries to contact the student who is up to his eyeballs with learning to be a medical professional and is getting paid – so they ignore the contact if they even got it. Security got P. O.’d and went to the Command at HRC. The Command agreed that all officers need a clearance before they get scholarship benefits and decreed that they (HRC Accessions) would not issue an Appointment Order to anyone until the JPAS packet had been completed. They made this unilateral decision without consulting the people responsible for completing the JPAS (the recruiters). Or, The Office of the Surgeon General. HRC then compounded the problem by moving the appointments from the office that has been doing them for the last 15 years that I know of, to a new office as an additional duty – right in the middle of the busy enrollment season. So, you have the perfect storm of a change in process with no forewarning, and a personnel change – disaster is sure to follow. Here it is. There are approximately 150 HPSP students from the seven disciplines who, through no fault of their own or the recruiter o got caught in this bureaucratic trap.
All of this to say, if you have executed an oath of office, your scroll is not the problem. In 9 out o10 cases it is because your clearance got messed up. TALK TO YOUR ECRUITER. He needs to first ensure that you have a clearance, and then work with his chain of command up to Fort Knox, where the Recruiting Command can do a war dance on the right desk across the street at HRC. Don’t bother calling the HPSP office, they are waiting on a complete packet which includes an Appointment Order.
If you haven’t signed an oath, most likely the scroll with your name has not come back from Sec Def. Again it is up to your recruiter to work through his chain of command to Fort Knox to see what the holdup is.
In other words, all roads lead back to the recruiter.
