Thanks to the Daily Emerald for its in-depth look at OSPIRG (“The OSPIRG you can’t see,” ODE, Jan. 22). The article did a good job painting a broad brush stroke, including many of our accomplishments and the important blend of student activism with professional staff.
Sometimes, however, the best way to understand an organization is to go in-depth on just one accomplishment. Fortunately, a recent victory helps illustrates OSPIRG’s service to the student body.
Last October, President Bush signed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, one of the biggest expansions in student aid in 15 years. The new law will increase the maximum Pell Grant award by $1,090 over the next four years; allow borrowers to repay their loans as percentage of their income; and reduce interest rates on student loans for student borrowers receiving subsidized Stafford loans.
OSPIRG student chapter money was not used, of course, to lobby for this bill. However, Congressional insiders say that our policy and education work over the last three years – on campus here in Oregon, through your Washington, D.C.,-based Higher Education Advocate Luke Swarthout and through the other Student PIRG organizations – was the key force that led Congress to finally act.
OSPIRG has been sounding the alarm about rising student debt and falling financial aid for over a decade now, authoring over two dozen reports describing the problem and the various policy solutions. Swarthout has become one of the nation’s leading experts on financial aid policy, a trusted source for members of the media, education associations and Congress alike. However, even as recently as two years ago, the financial and political clout of lenders like Sallie Mae had stymied meaningful action.
In early 2005, public opinion was starting to rally around college affordability in a big way. We theorized that we could tap into that enough to overwhelm Sallie Mae’s clout and shift the political winds in our favor. We launched a campaign called Student Debt Alert (www.studentdebtalert.org), the perfect “one-two punch” of student activism and professional staff.
Swarthout used his considerable expertise to author five reports that broke down the problem and solutions in a way that was easy for the public to understand. He met with key Washington, D.C., players on this issue – education associations, government officials, reporters and members of Congress – and worked to persuade them to support our policy solutions.
Meanwhile, students in Oregon and around the country mobilized, releasing Swarthout’s research to the local media, packing local government hearings with students, and collecting thousands of personal testimonies of the problems of student debt. Our work precipitated news story after news story about the problems of student debt and financial aid. To be sure all this was heard in D.C., Swarthout personally sent every press clip and testimony to the Washington, D.C., insiders.
Our breakthrough occurred in last fall when the new Congressional leadership announced that they would enact many of the very policy solutions we had been calling for. Insiders in Congress tell us that Swarthout’s impeccable research and policy arguments, combined with the impressive size and discipline of the students’ grassroots operation made the difference.
The results? A more affordable education for UO students. A real-life lesson in government and politics. Hands-on civic engagement opportunities for hundreds of UO students who volunteered or wrote their Congress representatives letters. For $2 per student, that’s a bargain!
Jesse Hough
Co-chair of the UO chapter of OSPIRG