Occupy Student Debt Campaign Urges Students To Refuse To Pay Off Their Student Loans

By Willis Plummer

Today, Occupy Student Debt is launching a national campaign to protest “the tyranny of student debt in the US higher education system”. The campaign aims to get students around the country to join a “debt strike”. Students who sign the campaign will be pledging not to pay off their student loans.

This ambitious campaign hopes that its immense numbers will be enough to prevent serious economic repercussions, but for now the group remains small. At this time, the Occupy Student Debt Campaign’s Facebook page only has 118 ‘likes’ and only 41 students have signed the debtors’ pledge.

The debtors’ strike has been organized with help from Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU. When he led a teach-in in mid-October entitled “Is Student Debt a Form of Indenture,” Ross sparked this challenge to student debt. Last week, he explained his involvement to The Chronicle; “Like many faculty, I see a lot of suffering and humiliation among students in taking on this debt. There was the recognition that my own salary is debt-financed. … There’s an element of complicity. It’s an incredible burden for faculty to bear.”

The Occupy Student Campaign has three pledges right now; the debtor’s pledge, the non-debtors’ pledge of support, and the faculty pledge of support. All three are based on a common set of principles: “that student loans should be interest-free; that tuition at all public institutions should be federally funded; that private and for-profit colleges should open their financial records to the public; and that students’ “debt burden” should be written off.”

The consequences of not paying off student loans may be too great for many to face. Only time will tell whether this campaign will gain momentum or quietly flicker out in the coming weeks.

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