Kathryn Walters |
For senior Jessica Kast, the color red has a deeper meaning than the color of roses and heart-shaped Valentine’s Day candy.
For her, red is the symbolic representation of her student loan debt. Red used to be the color her cheeks would turn with embarrassment when she admitted to owing $21,000 in student loans.
But now, Kast and other UP students are reclaiming the negative association the color red has with being in debt through the Red Square Movement, which Kast started on campus at the beginning of this semester.
“The Red Square Movement is a way of people standing up and saying ‘I have student debt’ and not being ashamed of it because so many people on campus are struggling with this and not really talking about it,” Kast said.
The Red Square Movement’s presence on campus is a sign of the growing issue of student loan debt in the U.S. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, student loan debt in the U.S. reached $1.2 trillion last May, making it the second-largest form of consumer debt, second only to home mortgage debt and well above credit card debt.
Sophomore Marissa Kelly finds this number appalling, and as a social work major, is concerned that her future career will prevent her from paying off her student loans. She said she is afraid that in the future, she might have to refuse a job she would love because it might pay too little for her to make her student loan payments.
“How do you expect young professionals to succeed and thrive and to positively contribute to society if they’re so overwhelmed by their debt that they can’t do what they were trained to do?” she said.
Living in the Red
For many students, debt has a profound effect on their college experience. Although she does receive some financial help from her father, Kelly works three on-campus jobs to support herself and intends to graduate next year to alleviate her student loan debt.
“I would have liked to stay for four years, but knowing how much money I would have taken on, I pushed to be able to do that (graduate early),” Kelly said.
Sophomore Sarah Street said she considered attending college elsewhere because of UP’s high tuition costs.
“I could have gone to the University of Oregon and had no student debt at all,” Street said. “I could have gone paying nothing and still got a really good degree, but I felt like UP would be a good home for me and I valued the class sizes and the community here more than I did at UO. And so I chose to pay more to have a better experience.”
At the end of her sophomore year, Kast nearly dropped out of UP because she couldn’t afford it anymore, but she said Fr. Gary Chamberland intervened and helped her get some scholarships so she could stay. While she is grateful for this, her student debt is still a heavy burden to bear.
“Are my loan payments going to be more than my rent? Am I not going to be able to buy groceries for that week because I have to pay back my loans?” Kast said. “I work two jobs and I make enough money to support myself while in college, but when I leave, what’s that going to look like?”
By the Numbers
According to Janet Turner, director of Financial Aid, last year almost 63 percent of UP’s seniors graduated with student debt. Additionally, the average amount of debt UP graduates left with last year was $27,181.68, which included both federal and private loans. However, these numbers only reflect students who spent all four years at UP, which excludes transfer students.
Despite the large number of students graduating with student debt, Turner said students don’t come in for financial aid counseling very frequently, and previous outreach attempts about student loan debt and repayment options were not heavily attended.
“Even though we’ve tried to offer information out there, it’s not highly attended,” she said. “I don’t know if people don’t think about loans until they graduate or they’re just not worried about it.”
Kast sees another explanation. She said some students she has spoken to have no idea how much debt they accumulate because they let their parents handle it while they’re in college.
“That to me is very scary because you’re going to leave college and graduate and you have no idea how much loans you’ve accumulated over those years,” Kast said. “People don’t understand the reality of it in school because they pretend like it doesn’t exist.”
Squarely in the Red
Adapted from a 2012 Quebec university student movement that protested tuition increases, the main goal of the Red Square Movement at UP is to bring awareness to the growing national problem of student loan debt and to encourage students to not be ashamed by taking out student loans to pay for their education.
“We just use this symbol as a way of identifying that a lot of people on campus are struggling with it and we want to open up a dialogue and have people talk about it,” Kast said.
In the first week of the semester, Kast and 10 other students passed out 500 small red felt squares for students to pin on their jackets or backpacks in a visual show of support for those who have student loan debt.
“It was really cool to walk around campus and see people that I didn’t even know wearing the red square on their backpack or something,” Kast said. “Some people were hesitant but even people who didn’t have debt were excited to jump on board and say that they supported people who do have it.”
Kast and other students have been meeting this semester and are currently planning another event to bring awareness to student debt on campus and how this problem connects to issues of cultural and racial diversity.
Changes Ahead
Changes in population demographics could have an effect on who attends UP and how much financial assistance they may need. A brief released in January by UP’s Institutional Research predicts in the coming years there will likely be an increase of Hispanic high school graduates in Oregon and Washington. Typically, families of minority backgrounds tend to have lower incomes, meaning that more prospective students will need financial assistance to attend a private university like UP.
Turner said University President-elect Fr. Mark Poorman recognizes these trends and is committed to increasing the endowment for student scholarships.
“He knows there’s trends where there’s going to be more low-income students who want to attend UP and so if we can offer more scholarships from our endowment, that’s going to help,” Turner said.
However, more immediate changes may be on the horizon for current student borrowers. Even though Congress approved a student loan bill last year that lowered interest rates on federal direct loans, that bill also fixed interest rates to the 10-year Treasury note. This means that as the economy improves, it becomes more expensive for the government to borrow money, which could raise interest rates again. This could make paying back student loans even more of a burden, according to Turner.
“I think the best thing for students to be is aware that they are borrowing a loan, that loans have to be repaid with interest,” Turner said.
How to manage student debt
Apply for scholarships every year.
“One way to avoid student loans is to apply for scholarships every year,” Turner said. “Students will come in with scholarships in their freshman year but they don’t continue to search for scholarships their sophomore and junior years.”
Stay in contact with your loan servicer after graduation
“Staying in contact with your loan servicer is really important because students can move around a lot after they graduate and so it’s really important to stay in contact and if you have problems making payments, for you to tell your servicer so they can see what kinds of options are there for you,” Turner said.
Know how to properly fill out your FAFSA
“I think that’s something you need to know as soon as you sign up for the FAFSA and fill out those documents,” Kast said. “Students need to be educated in what they’re getting themselves into.”
More advice
Only borrow up to what you need, not necessarily to the total cost of attendance.
If you can, pay the interest on your loans during college so it doesn’t accumulate.
Counseling through the Office of Financial Aid is still available even after graduation.
To get more information on your own student loans, visit www.nslds.ed.gov (National Student Loan Data System). You’ll need: your Social Security number, first two letters of your last name, date of birth, and FAFSA PIN.
