OCCUPY STUDENT DEBT

Thanks for reading. You can also view my youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkaA8qRc_eE&feature=BFa&list=UUXrJSnP_s2jdTJm1tATWhJw&lf=plcp

My story is similar to millions of young American graduates, so I won’t focus on the fact that my wife and I are a combined 120,000 thousand dollars in student debt. I won’t elaborate about the harassment we have both endured from private lenders like Sallie Mae,Great Lakes, and Key Bank. I won’t argue the fact the middle class are getting taken advantage of by having most of their loans privatized instead of subsidized and that our higher education industry has become a corporate enterprise exhibiting the same characteristics of a greed driven Wall Street. These contentions already have been articulated by the millions of young professionals waking up to the reality that, “we don’t live in a pay to play society anymore, we live in a borrow to work society”. I will, however, talk about how my journey as an Actor and Storyteller intersected with the issue of the student loan debt crisis.

After transitioning cities and getting married I felt my acting career was stalling even before it really began. It wasn’t because of my lack of effort, training, and experience in theNew Yorkmarket. It was because my Bachelor Degree in communications became my financial nightmare instead of a worthwhile investment.

Both my wife and I put our careers and lives on hold to take jobs in retail sales to try and pay-off our loan debt. Debt that we accrued because we were led to believe it would give us an even playing field in our professions. It had the opposite effect.

Ironically, I took a job as an admissions adviser at a For Profit University to keep up with my outrageous monthly student loan payments. The position was my real education on how corruption of the American higher education system not only affected the students I was advising, but my own life. I learned about the nature about For Profit Schools and how they capitalized on the hopes and dreams of our most vulnerable peoples in society. That all Universities were raising their tuition every year while the government continued to allow unemployed college students to take out max-level student loans. How employers worked in concert with the schools and lenders by requiring a bachelor degree or higher to perform jobs that barely made a living wage. Finally, how my employer pushed me to perform my job unethically in order to keep it.

I had enough. I’d had enough being controlled by my own student debt. I was sick that I was making a living putting other young Americans in that same debt. So I chose freedom by using my skills as an actor and storyteller to create a play that would explore the narrative of the student loan debt crisis.

The play, which took almost 6 months to write, is appropriately titled “For Profit”. With this solo-performance it’s my intention to create awareness and inspire social change in regard to the student debt crisis.

My work as a performing artist stems from the inherent need to communicate with other human beings. In my performances I focus on the complex exchange of ideas and experiences of everyday American society. Therefore, it is my obligation to tell this story, and instead of continuing to be victimized by this system, to use my abilities to help change it.