August 9, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Student Debt Means Fewer Public Servants
Trained for non-
profit but hard to
pay the bills
by a lyssa a quino
Cum laude, my
diploma
reads
— “with honor.”
But cum debitum,
“with debt,” is a bit
more accurate.
Collectively, America’s stu-
dent borrowers owe $1.7 trillion.
On average, each graduating se-
nior this year is beginning their
life around $37,000 in the hole.
That looks like a lot, but when
you’re living with student debt,
you look at that number and
don’t even flinch. The debt is so
normal it’s like an inside joke for
pretty much everyone in my gen-
eration. Except we’re the punch
line.
I graduated class of 2015 from
a private, liberal arts college — a
“most selective” one, U.S. News
and World Report assures me. It
was also an expensive degree,
Sallie Mae reminds me. Month-
ly.
Yes, I chose to go to a private,
expensive college. There was a
calculus there, and one part of it
was “I liked the feeling of it.”
I know, this type of sentimen-
tal idealism is a privilege. It’s
no surprise I came out with the
equally sentimental notion that I
wanted to do non-profit work —
which makes it that much harder
to pay those loan bills.
It’s baffling to my Fili-
pino parents. They didn’t
cross the ocean and con-
sign themselves to dis-
crimination and demeaning
jobs because they liked the
“feel of it” — or even on
the promise that their lives
would be better. They did it on
the promise that my life would
be better. And that I wouldn’t
owe anyone anything.
They could live underwater,
they decided — but they at least
expected their children to take a
breath of fresh air. Well, some-
times it feels like the air is pol-
luted. And the water is teeming
with loan sharks.
So much so that some com-
panies — among them many
banks, financial institutions, and
other large for-profit businesses
— have begun including student
loan repayment assistance in
their salary packages.
I have to admit it’s tempting,
especially since the Trump ad-
ministration wants to end a fed-
eral program that would forgive
the student loans of people who
commit to public service work.
What’s the alternative, after
all?
Having a non-profit career
in something you care about
can require years of barely re-
munerated labor: an unpaid
internship, volunteer work, a
have children — since you don’t
want to deal with their student
debt either.
It’s not surprising to me that
some of my classmates decide
to return to school — maybe if
they add more letters to their de-
generation of people trained to
enter the public service entering
Wall Street instead?
What a loss.
This is just one facet of the
student debt crisis — others in-
clude putting off starting a fam-
...Some companies — among them many
banks, financial institutions, and other large
for-profit businesses — have begun including
student loan repayment assistance in their
salary packages. I have to admit it’s tempting,
especially since the Trump administration
wants to end a federal program that would
forgive the student loans of people who
commit to public service work.
minimum-wage second job, or
a salary that barely meets the
threshold for a living wage.
Prioritizing a career in some-
thing you care about, in addition
to paying rent and groceries, re-
quires consigning yourself to a
debt you’ll live with until you
have children. That is, if you
gree they’ll magically land a job
they’re passionate about with a
salary that can pay the bills.
It’s also not surprising that
some of my peers decide to join
the other side, cashing in on con-
nections and scooping up those
high-paying corporate jobs. But
what happens when you have a
ily or buying a home. Too many
of us are saddled with debt, and
too many of us are structuring
our lives around this ledger.
Alyssa Aquino is a Next Lead-
er at the Institute for Policy
Studies. Distributed by Other-
Words.org
Political Showdown with the Nine Nuclear Powers
A treaty to
ban all nuclear
weapons
t oM h. h astings
We have been living
with nuclear weapons
for 72 years, so that
must make them safe
and sustainable, right?
Wrong.
Nuclear weapons are the only
way we have of killing most hu-
mans on Earth in the space of a
few hours—far more immediately
than global climate chaos, which is
itself a dire threat. Indeed, reliable
astroscientists assure us that they
predict no giant meteor collisions
nor anything else that can wreck
life on Earth for at least millennia,
except the ultimate self-inflicted
nuclear apocalypse.
Most of humankind under-
stands this. Most of humankind is
not defended in any conceivable
fashion by the godawful weapons
by
in the arsenals of just nine of the
200 nations on Earth.
That is why we are witnessing
a political showdown between the
overwhelming majority of
the planet’s countries and
the nine nuclear powers.
Oh, you hadn’t heard
about this conflict? That
is hardly surprising in our
strange media and polit-
ical atmosphere of ran-
dom bellicose presidential
tweets, votes on whether to slash
healthcare for our most vulnerable
citizens, and narcissistic speeches
to the bewildered Boy Scouts. Not
to mention the deranged cockfight
environment we are witnessing in-
side the inner circle in the oddest,
most dysfunctional White House
in U.S. history.
Far more meaningful in the
long arc of human history and
certainly in our hopes for future
generations is the recently passed
treaty to ban all nuclear weapons
on Earth.
Yes, there have been sidelong,
kick-the-warhead-down-the-time-
line attempts before, including the
1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, the
1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, the stalled Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty, but now comes a
full frontal legal and worldwide
political assault on the enemy of
the generations, nukes.
And we have seen successful
treaties to outlaw both biological
weapons (1972) and chemical
weapons (1992), neither of which
have ever been capable of the im-
mediate and long term threat to
life locked and loaded in the arse-
nals of just nine nations.
Naturally, it is the world v. nu-
clear weapons nation-states, plus a
few nations who don’t have nukes
but whose economic and political
arms have been twisted, primarily
by the US.
The 72 years since the atom-
ic annihilation of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki is nothing more than a
quick eye blink in the long span
of human history and prehistory.
Nukes are a single incident away
from wrecking your life, your
great-grandchildren’s lives, and
those of everyone else. They are
now officially criminal and have
always been evil.
Now is the most opportune time
ever to let your federal elected of-
ficials know that we stand with the
vast majority of people on planet
Earth. It’s time. Sign that treaty
and get it ratified. Save the world,
literally.
Tom H. Hastings is a professor
of conflict resolution at Portland
State University and director of
PeaceVoice.
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