Photo above of the shareholder meeting protest on May 30, 2013, courtesy of the Student Labor Action Project.
My name is Alyssia Osorio, an organizer with New York Students Rising, and a City College student who will be graduating with over $10,000 worth of debt. I was apart of mobilizing for the Sallie Mae shareholders meeting as well as getting a bus with folks from New York and New Jersey to Newark, Delaware.This process was hectic but powerful. That’s because I felt united with the students on my bus in my struggle for education that is free and accessible for all. Students were going to the shareholders meeting to demand lower tuition, lower interest rates, and a debt free education.
I got off the bus in the blazing heat, and marched with other students, advocates, and labor leaders to the meeting. We were chanting, singing, and holding signs. We were met with a line of police, and I clutched my shareholder proxy as we went through another line of police, and into the building. Coming into the meeting, we had to give security our cell phones and went through a metal detector, which made me feel like a criminal for simply asking a company to stop its predatory lending practices, and to be more transparent in the way their company is run.
There were two things I immediately noticed upon entering the shareholders meeting. The first was the lack of diversity of the shareholders, the second was that the shareholders were on their cell phones, which seemed pretty unfair since security had given us such a hard time. It seemed like most people in the room were business men, not people who were struggling with paying off their loans, or students taking on the loans.
This makes me ask, why are people with so little experience in the actual lives of Sallie Mae customers making the decisions for them? People of color get higher interests rates, and are often more likely to fund their education with private loans. With a past racial discrimination lawsuit, it seems like Sallie Mae shareholders simply don’t care if their company has racist practices.The only priority is the bottom line at the expense of others.
During the meeting, many college accessibility advocates voiced their concerns over the way the company is run, and it’s relationship to the American Legislative Policy Council (or ALEC), a right-wing think tank that makes model conservative policy. Though the Sallie Mae executives seemed tense and dismissive of concerns, ultimately we won a meeting with new CEO Jack Remondi and Sallie Mae Vice President Joe DePaulo, which demonstrates the power we students now have due to the political dissent about unfair student loan practices across the country.
Leaving the meeting, and joining the crowd of students still chanting and singing, as well as sharing their stories of student debt, made me feel so connected and proud of the people who I share this movement with. I’m not alone in being fed up with Sallie Mae, not alone in having parents who invest all they can into my education, but falling short due to the financial inaccessibility, and not alone in doing whatever it takes to make sure the future generations of students are not taking on another trillion dollars of student debt. Education is a right, not a privilege, and students will continue fighting until education is accessible to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.—
