Today I received this email from Rebuild the Dream:
Dear Shawn,
Have you ever heard of Sallie Mae? They're the nation's largest student lender -- and they aren't as sweet and innocent as their name suggests. In fact, they're downright exploitative.
Case in point: when we asked the Rebuild the Dream community to share stories about their student loan debt, Barbara H. from Tennessee said this about her son:
"He's not been able to find a decent job, is barely making ends meet, so has not been able to start paying his loans. He's talked to Sallie Mae regarding this, but they continue to call him daily, including Saturday and Sunday. Then they started calling me daily, since I was listed as a secondary contact. When I complained to their representative that this was harassment, I was informed that they can call each contact number up to eight times per day."
And Rose (not her real name) shared this:
"I encouraged my grandson to pursue a college degree, because I thought as a Black male, his chances of landing a decent paying job would be much improved. Because I co-signed, I now use a great portion of my Social Security check to pay the loans.When I called Sallie Mae to work out a payment plan, the representative told me to tell my grandson to sell his plasma to pay the loan."
That's right -- Sallie Mae told Rose that her grandson should sell his blood to keep up with his loan payments. Sallie Mae doesn't offer alternative payment plans for students. As it turns out, this is just the way they do business
Now this obviously got me mad. I believe education is a universal human right, which should never be exploited for profit and greed. I was fortunate enough to receive scholarships/pell grant and my parents financial assistance to attend college, but I know many of my friends who weren’t as lucky and are now struggling to pay back their loans.
To put salt on their wounds, their degrees did not procure them the jobs that they wanted and many are now working meager jobs struggling to pay for their most basic needs such as rent and utilities.
That is why I support the principles of Occupy Student Debt:
The Four Principles/Beliefs
** Tuition-Free Public Higher Education
The single, largest step we could take to alleviate future student loan debt would be to guarantee tuition-free education for students enrolled at public colleges and universities. In the case of systems in California and New York that were formerly free, this would be a restoration of the status quo. For others, it would be a restoration of the spirit of the GI Bill, which provided a free college education to tens of millions, and established U.S. higher education as a democratic gold standard worldwide. According to a recent estimate, drawn from Department of Education data, the cost of covering tuition at all the nation’s two- and four-year colleges and universities would be about $70 billion. Put in the perspective of the federal budget, a recent audit found that the Pentagon “wastes” this sum in unaccountable spending every year. Ending the Bush tax cuts ($80 billion annually) would easily cover this cost.
** Zero-Interest Student Loans
Student loans are not consumer loans, and they should not be packaged as if they were consumer credit debt. At a time when a university degree is considered to be a prerequisite for employment in the knowledge economy, debt, for most students, is a precondition for entry into the workforce. They cannot work unless they have gone into debt–a condition akin to indenture. This arrangement does not correspond in any meaningful way to a consumer choice. Zero-interest student loans are the only justifiable kind of lending under these circumstances. The current scenario, in which government agencies, banks, and other private lenders set extortionate rates and extract lavish profits is corrupt and abhorrent.
** Private Colleges Must Open Their Books
Students at private and for-profit universities and colleges have a fundamental right to know how their tuition dollars are being allocated and spent. These institutions are fiscally dependent on student loan debt, they enjoy a tax-free status, and they are beneficiaries of federal largesse in all sorts of ways. Withholding information about the conduct of their fiscal affairs is a violation of the ethos of shared governance and transparency that liberal institutions like universities should be promoting, and practicing.
** Student Debt Written Off In The Spirit of Jubilee
The student loan industry has profited from borrower vulnerability through predatory lending practices such as compounding interest rates, high collection fees, and few consumer protections. Inflating tuition costs have been financed through student debt that will soon exceed 1 trillion dollars. The morality of perpetuating this unjust system by continuing to pay these predatory loans is questionable. In times of fuller employment, the student loan debt system has yielded no end of private suffering and humiliation for at least two generations of debtors. In a time of chronic underemployment–and the worst may be yet to come–the burden is beyond tolerance. Immediate forgiveness in the spirit of a jubilee, where the injustice of an unpayable debt is redeemed through a single, corrective act, is the only just response to this crisis.
http://www.occupystudentdebtcampaign.org/...
Sallie Mae has a very deceitful and malevolent practice of jacking up student loan fees and then placing that burden on taxpayers as this video explains:
Join me and Rebuild the Dream in telling Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord that: We don’t sell our blood to pay our loans. Work with student loan borrowers to come up with new repayment plans. Sign this petition below:
http://act.rebuildthedream.com/...