Robert Barker/University Photography

Monet Dumas, MBA '14, calls Congressional leaders urging them to address student loan issues.

The Cornell Graduate and Professional Student Assembly hosted a Call-Congress day Dec. 4 in the Big Red Barn as a part of the national GradsHaveDebt2 campaign. Graduate and professional students at Cornell joined fellow students around the nation to call federal lawmakers about their debt burden and the interest rate inequality facing graduate students.

The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) launched the campaign last summer in response to recent legislation that increases financial burdens on students pursuing post-baccalaureate degrees. The nationwide Call-Congress event allowed Cornell students to express concerns, share stories of personal impact and urge Congressional action on student loan inequality.

Cornell graduate students placed 83 calls to members of Congress, the third-highest number among 27 participating schools, said Nicole Baran, a doctoral candidate in the field of psychology and counsel to the Cornell Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. “Most of the calls were to our senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, and to Congressman Tom Reed.”

The GradsHaveDebt2 campaign seeks to give graduate students a voice in student loan conversations by educating legislators and the public about postgraduate student debt and interest rate inequality. The campaign gained the attention of legislators on Capitol Hill; within a week of its launch, California Sen. Barbara Boxer quoted concerns raised by NAGPS through the GradsHaveDebt2 campaign on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Additionally, the GPSA expressed support for the GradsHaveDebt2 campaign.

“My experience was that everyone we spoke with, usually congressional staffers in D.C., were very nice, and the calls were actually kind of fun,” Baran said. “Though by the sixth or seventh call you could tell that they had heard the speech before. The chair of the NAGPS Legislative Concerns Committee said she started receiving phone calls from congressional offices asking her what was going on, suggesting the GradsHaveDebt2 Call Congress event started to generate some buzz on Capitol Hill.”

The campaign, which will continue into 2014, urges members of Congress to pass new legislation that:

• Reduces interest rates and caps on federal student loans available to graduate and professional students;
• Unifies the undergraduate and graduate rates to reverse the current inequalities; and
• Restores graduate-professional student eligibility for subsidized Stafford loans.

Further information is available at Facebook.com/GradsHaveDebt2, including personal accounts from students at Cornell and across the country discussing their struggles with postgraduate student debt.