By the time Charlie Eisenhood graduates, he will be $20,000 in debt. The NYU Local editor-in-chief has it relatively easy, as the average NYU student incurs almost $35,000 in loans by graduation. My own debt is a little closer to the national average, just under $24,000. But as a collective body, all of NYU students' loans tally up to a shocking $659 million — the largest student debt of any non-profit university in the country.
Tomorrow, NYU Local is partnering with MTV darling and former NYU student Andrew Jenks in an event they've titled Casualties of Debt: An NYU Student Demonstration. Jenks explains it best: we are casualties because after we graduate, we may as well be indentured servants. "Our lifetime is going to be spent trying to pay people back for things," Jenks said (who, by the way, dropped out of NYU to pursue decidedly more awesome filmmaking ventures before landing his own MTV show).
The event description is intentionally vague: Jenks and Eisenhood basically just want students to come to Washington Square Park (after calculating the total amount of money they will owe NYU after graduation), and they'll "take care of the rest." Jenks and his crew will film the event, which he hopes to distribute on MTV.com and YouTube, so other colleges around the country can plan their own grassroots, collective action demonstrations.
In this partnership, Eisenhood, a senior economics major, is the hard-headed policy wonk, designed to hammer concepts about university politics into you until you agree or the whole exercise ends in a shouting match. Jenks takes a decidedly softer approach, asking questions as he's being interviewed, listening quietly and then abruptly filling the space with twitchy commentary.
Jenks sees himself as the microphone, not the politician. Yes, he is an advocate providing the physical platform for dialogue on a grand scale: "I have the unique chance of having a microphone and having this TV show and I can get people's attention ... so I figured why not stand up for these kids." But he is adamant that the answers, and the political advocacy, should come straight from the mouths of NYU students. Jenks singled out Eisenhood, someone he sees as uniquely qualified given his experience writing about debt for NYU Local, to lead this conversation on a national scale.
When Jenks traveled around the country speaking at colleges, he was looking for a story. His previous pieces seem to have a drive to illuminate that which is normally obscured, to make the invisible visible (his favorite episode from his MTV series is a piece in which he profiled a young homeless woman in San Francisco for a week, living homeless himself for that time as part of the documentary-making process). This time around, the angle came to him fairly quickly in the form of handwritten notes from students, hesitantly raised hands and softly sighing, frightened whispers. Debt. What are we going to do when we graduate?
Eisenhood isn't demanding that the university slash tuition, or even offer more financial aid. The fact of the matter is that NYU is a tuition-run school, primarily funded by its undergraduates and master's students. And as the university doesn't have a large endowment per student, this cold fact isn't going to change any time soon. But Eisenhood claims NYU should do more to educate students about their debt, and to advocate more on a local and national level for policy change in terms of student loans. "Do colleges and public policy organizations in the government make it clear that there are repercussions associated with having that kind of debt?" he asked.
NYU spokesman John Beckman would say that NYU's admissions and financial aid counselors do try to make students aware of their financial commitments before they decide to enroll in NYU. "Our admissions and financial aid officers are very candid as they speak with candidates for admission that college is an investment, and it is a four-year investment — it is not a matter of simply cobbling together financing to make the first year work," Beckman wrote in an e-mail.
Tisch film graduate Jonah Quickmire Pettigrew is, in many senses, the NYU success story. As a successful videographer and writer, he has been involved in numerous projects in New York City, including a gig as director of photography for Jenks' MTV show. But one thing has been left out of this glowing description: Pettigrew owes about $200,000 to various collection agencies, an amount he might never completely pay off. "It's like no matter how much you make, you're barely scraping by. I'm paying for my food with nickels and dimes," the 2008 graduate said. Pettigrew hasn't even been able to collect his diploma yet because he still owes NYU money for classes his student loans did not cover at the time.
Jenks said Pettigrew is the only friend he made during his stint at NYU, and one of the main reasons he decided to come back to campus for a media blitz on student debt awareness.
Despite their personal connections to campus, both Jenks and Eisenhood acknowledge that NYU students can be apathetic when it comes to campus activism, especially after the Take Back NYU Occupation — the last substantive campus protest that addressed university transparency, financial aid and student debt — failed to inspire any sort of change in university policy. And the most emphatic critics of the planned demonstration thus far have made a valid point: NYU is a school that caters to privileged students. Some comments on an NYU Local article posted by Eisenhood to advertise the event suggest that students who are unhappy at NYU could easily find placement at less expensive schools. "The protest is an excuse for loud mouths to make a lot of noise ... To hear of people complaining about their loans is just annoying because they chose to come here and they choose to continue enrollment," wrote a commenter by the name of Holly Demarcus.
But Jenks was quick to point out that a résumé that says 'NYU film school' presents much more exciting opportunities than an education from a community college.
For Eisenhood, the demonstration would be most effective if it resulted in an immediate response from the university.
"I'd like NYU to feel compelled to put out a statement both on their own policy on financial aid and maybe what we could do nationally," he said. "If anybody who could offer a solution, it should be NYU. We're the nonprofit with the largest student debt in the country."
But Beckman's initial response suggests the administration won't be easily swayed into any sort of immediate action.
"We think the conversation is already going on in many venues at NYU — in conversations with applicants for admission, with potential donors and in settings such as town halls," Beckman wrote.
Casualties of Debt: an NYU Student Demonstration is at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow in Holley Plaza in Washington Square Park. Visit the Facebook page for more more information.
