As New Yorker Sabrina Calazans sees it, her circumstances are a prime example of what’s fueling the campaign to cancel some, if not all, student loan debt. Since exiting Pennsylvania’s Arcadia College in 2019 with $43,000 in student loan debt and a bachelor’s degree in international studies, Calazans mainly has worked a series of summer camp and $15-an-hour temp jobs.
“It’s not that I don’t want to pay this bill, it’s that I can’t afford to,” says Calazans, who in early April became a $20-an-hour, part-time organizer for Student Debt Crisis, a national organization.
“And my situation is not unique,” she adds. “There are millions of people in a similar place, including people who are too ashamed to talk about it.”
Calazans shared a similar message with U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona, NAACP CEO President Derrick Johnson and U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-NH) during a recent online chat. Also in that private conversation were three other indebted college grads who, like Calazans, are tracking how the nation’s lawmakers will decide whether, how much and for whom student loan debt might be wiped out.
President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed canceling the first $10,000 of every borrower’s debt. Warren and Schumer are urging the administration to forgive up to $50,000.
Those proposals come amid a White House extension, through at least September 2021, of a pre-existing coronavirus-prompted emergency suspension of student loan repayments. They also come as observers across the political and policy spectrum calculate the costs of debt cancellation.
A question of capacity
