Posted on 11/22/2011 3:53:24 AM PST by Cardhu
A number of student organizers in the US have unveiled what they call an 'Occupy Student Debt' campaign, urging borrowers across the country to default on their college loans.
The campaign was made public Monday afternoon in New York's Zuccotti Park, where the national Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement emerged, the Huffington Post reported.
“Since the first days of the Occupy movement, the agony of student debt has been a constant refrain,” said Andrew Ross, a professor at New York University and an active OWS member, while addressing a crowd in the park
“We've heard the harrowing personal testimony about the suffering and humiliation of people who believe their debts will be unplayable in their lifetime,” Ross said.
Meanwhile, the campaigns “beliefs” or objectives were announced during the rally.
The student movement has four major objectives, apart from convincing all students to default on their loans, a move for which they have collected one million signatures in a petition.
They want student loans to be interest-free, tuitions at public institutions to be federally funded, students' debt to be written off and financial records of for-profit and private institutions to be made public.
“I see my students who have to work not only one but two jobs just to afford our relatively reasonable tuition rates,” said Ashley Dawson, an associate professor at the City University of New York.
“For students faced with debt, this campaign is important because it will help provide them with a collective organizing vehicle,” Dawson said.
The campaign emerged as an offshoot of the OWS, which has now spread across major US cities as well as many capitalist countries in the world.
Members of the OWS movement have for the past two months been protesting against corporate greed, unemployment, corruption and poverty in the United States.
This is like Bawney Fwank lecturing OWS about failing banks. The dear professor and his homies are the ones who have jacked up university costs way beyond reason to serve themselves. He’s speaking to the debt slaves he and his “smart” pals created.
My guess is that most people whining about student loans got degrees that were NEVER gong to get them a job with a decent wage.
Who the Hell did that nit-twit with the sign borrow money from? Clue #1 in borrowing; Never borrow money from someone who uses the words, “youse guys.”
I know the interest rates today are in the 1.5% range but I wonder what they were in the 80s and 90s. Just after the Carter presidency they must have been astronomical.
CUNY/Baruch College Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN7uV3iltno
This part will be pushed, as well as the usual ‘fascist cops hurting peaceful protesters for no reason’ meme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41hyFRrIQ-U
Background: CUNY meeting on increase
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuVrYsuTf6Q&feature=related
The press pushes the meme:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/baruch_students_arrested_tbZhOGneVwDA4ZZ6QH2KoK
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/arrests-in-tuition-protest-at-baruch-college/
Agree.... 23 years later and she hasn’t paid off 26K? I’d empower the IRS to go get it from her if it was my call.
I bought a car in 1981 at 17% gmac interest. It cost about half of her original loan. I paid it off in 4 years. She’s an idiot and probably has 5 credit cards maxed out all the time.
“23 years ago” was eight years after the end of the Carter presidency.
Well, considering that NYU has a tax-free endowment of $2.37 billion, that wouldn't seem out of the question, would it?
Do these parasites even care what that would do to the students with integrity who will not default, particularly to the next generation who will borrow at a much higher interest rate because the Entitled Class won’t pay their own debts? I doubt it - the “99%” seems to be the same lazy, indifferent bums who put Obama into office, and they are still just as clueless.
I don't think ANYONE should borrow money to go to college, I know that 75% of college students are too stupid to be there, AND I know that the cost of college is a bubble inflated by the student loan industry/government program.
BUT
I bet signing up for a student loan does not involve a process that emphasizes full disclosure in the way that, for example, a mortgage loan used to do.
I doubt that most of these obligors "knew exactly what the deal was". And I believe that the colleges and universities that have been greasing these loans for years, to their own profit, share a lot of the blame.
You are right there Sara, whenever the government steps in they just pocket what is on offer and add an amount which they consider the traffic will bear.
Guaranteed loans always sends the price up into the stratosphere.
I have zero tolerance for people who borrow money and then can’t make themselves pay it back. ZERO. I don’t care if it’s a student loan, a balloon note house loan, credit card interest... or whatever.
$117? More like around $110. As a first-order estimate I averaged the student loan interest rates that would have applied to this fruitcake’s loans if she’s really been paying on them for 23 years (which means she started paying on them in about 1988); that averaged rate comes out to about 6.33%. The monthly fixed payment that would result in her still owing about $45k on an initial balance of $26,400 is approximately $110.
$140 would most likely not have paid it off because, again using that averaged rate, that would just cover interest, plus a few pennies more. At $140/mo she still wouldn’t have full paid in 50 years.
However, a monthly payment of about $298, again using that averaged rate, would have full paid in 10 years.
Still a pathetic, useless, parasitic cry-baby if you ask me. She probably studied art history and figured she’d get a comfy, lucrative position as director of some museum straight out of undergrad.
What you don’t think they knew they had to pay it back? Good grief. Paying off loans is painful. There are so many other things we’d rather buy instead of paying off a loan. But people who borrow money and then won’t pay it back deserve jail. That’s it.
I’m sure most parents here, if necessary, would allow their kids to move back home, on condition that they are working and paying everything they can onto their loans.
If that was the situation.
That sign is a statement of how well that generation understands money .. the sign is bs, and anybody with a 5th grade math education can see it doesn’t “add up”. This one comes close to home. I paid off my student loan ... and can remember making a decision one day to either buy the Life Magazine (with the space station on the cover) or a pound of hamburger. I bought the hamburger and read the “Life” at the local library later. And I don’t consider those “hard times” .. it was simply “the times” many of us went through. Living is about decisions and integrity ... the student loan program is a test of both. Too bad so many of the younger generation fail the test. That is only an indicator that their “hippie” parents forget to teach them anything.
When first we practise to deceive!"
They want student loans to be interest-free, tuitions at public institutions to be federally funded, students' debt to be written off...
Back in time a few years, Article 1. Section 8. was a little single strand string around a core of federal responsibilities. And now its a complicated messy web of crap with tons of unintended and tended consequences - one part of the web emanating from the feds doing whatever about local education. Its grown to such a leviathan, that now its Monster SpiderGargantula is revolting, and wants everything for "free".
I’m okay with pitch her in jail for a while until those jail house costs total what she owes... then let her out and call it even.
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