Hundreds of students gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday to endorse President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive part of the student debt.
The nine Supreme Court magistrates, with a conservative majority, began listening to oral arguments in the case studying the legality of Biden’s plan, which was appealed by Republicans.
The Court must determine whether the US Department of Education has the authority to grant partial forgiveness of federal student loans.
While the judges listened to the arguments, hundreds of students gathered at their doors to endorse a plan that would benefit 40,000 people, with a total forgiveness of some $40,000 million dollars.
Among them was Jesús García, 32, who traveled from Los Angeles and camped overnight with other protesters to get a seat in the courtroom of the highest court in the United States.
García accumulates a debt of 150,000 dollars for his degree in Public Policy and believes that he will not be able to finish paying it off in his entire life.
“This year I tried to get a loan to buy my first house, just a room and a bathroom, and I couldn’t because I have student debt,” García told EFE, who also said that it is impossible for him to get married for the same reason.
Fatima Russell, 19, has just started her first year at Howard University in Washington, and at the moment her debt is $10,000, which will increase each year.
Russell is a first-generation college student — her parents couldn’t go to college — and finds that as a black woman she has it especially hard, as they are the group with the highest student debt.
“Not helping or wanting to advance black women is another way of not making the United States progress as a whole,” Russell claimed to EFE, who feels that she has a responsibility before her sisters and little cousins, who take her as an example for it.
If her student debt isn’t finally forgiven, Russell figures that by the time she’s 50, she’ll still be in debt.
The protest was organized by more than twenty groups, such as the Center for the Student Debt Crisis. Its director of outreach, Sabrina Calazans, 25, blames the Republicans who fight against the cancellation of this debt, since “it is legal” and “they should not look at partisan politics.”
Calazans, who stresses that she still lives at home with her parents, has a debt of $30,000 and Biden’s plan would cancel 20,000 of them, something that the student points out would help her future and that of her family.
Democrats such as Congressman Maxwell Frost or Senator Bernie Sanders attended the rally to support the cause that affects the “future of the United States” and encourage them to “fight for economic, racial, environmental and social justice.”
At the end of last August, Biden announced that he was going to forgive part of the debt that millions of university students contracted with the federal Administration to be able to pay for their studies, in a nod to the young vote before the mid-term elections on November 8.
The president reported the cancellation of up to 20,000 dollars of debt per student, although the measure only plans to benefit those who earn less than 125,000 dollars a year or those who, being married, have an income of less than 250,000 dollars a year.
With information from EFE
Also read:
- Americans increase their debts, with credit cards at their highest since the pre-pandemic
- US cities where it takes little time to save to buy a house
- US cities where it takes the longest to save for a home