(MintPress) – “It’s about re-regulating the banks, we are targeting Wells Fargo because they foreclosed on the most people, they profit off student debt,” said Leewana Thomas, a Macalester College student organizer, in a recent MintPress statement.
Student debt soared to over $1 trillion in mid-2012, a testament to the college industry — which is run like a corporation concerned only with profit. A small, but growing group of college students at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. are trying to confront this growing problem by pressuring college officials to move funds into smaller, community oriented banks.
The growing campaign is part of a broader, grassroots approach to ensuring that working families, students and activists work to create a coalition of resistance to the reckless banking practices largely responsible for 2008 financial collapse and a bevy of social problems going into 2013. “We are taking back the power from these lending institutions that are profiting off so many problems,” adds Thomas.
College divestment
Launched last spring, the nascent campaign didn’t start with a direct focus on student debt, but on the other negative banking policies afflicting communities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
“We saw firsthand the tangible devastation banks are causing by foreclosing on people in mass numbers. We started thinking about all these other things banks do,” added Thomas. In 2013, more than 1 million homes are expected to go through foreclosure, a growing problem years after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
The divestment campaign has since gained the support of community organizations including Occupy Homes, Minnesotans for a Fair Economy and other groups engaged in a common struggle to hold financial institutions accountable to the needs of local communities.
Although Macalester students have worked hard to increase the visibility and strength of the campaign on campus, college administrators have been somewhat ambiguous or resistant to the idea of transferring institutional funds.
“The president has been kind of wishy-washy about how he is supportive but doesn’t know how it would work. We have talked to the vice president of finance who has been optimistic about it working,” said Thomas
Ultimately, students hope to create a committee of students and community members capable of judging prospective banks through a “lens of social responsibility.” While there is no set list of banks that would be eligible, it is likely that a smaller bank or credit union will present the most compelling case.
“Through this process, a group of students, alumni, staff, and community members will create a set of standards that we expect institutions we bank with to uphold. Any bank can apply for the Wells Fargo money, and we will select the bank that works best with our values as an institution and a community,” wrote Sarah Knispel, a student organizer, in a December blog post.
Wells Fargo, the biggest bank in Minnesota and the fourth largest nationwide, is the target for such actions by schools and communities in the upper Midwest. Similar campaigns among NYU students and students in California have focused on divestment from other large banks, including Chase and Bank of America.
“We are targeting Wells Fargo because they are the worst in Minnesota. They foreclosed on the most people, they profit off student debt. Other community groups are targeting them as well, so we are standing in solidarity with a lot of other community groups,” said Thomas.
Student debt and home foreclosure may seem like disparate causes, but building cross-communal solidarity has helped to show students, working families and activists that their plight is inextricably connected to the greed and unfair practices of Wall Street banks.
Students debt, foreclosures link community members
Taking on a single bank is not just confronting the problems of students, it is about tackling a much larger set of societal problems.
“In North Minneapolis, over half the homes are underwater. It’s really horrifying to see. We started building personal relationships with these people. Then we started thinking about all these other things that banks do,” said Thomas.
In addition to these issues, members of the Somali refugee community have reportedly been denied the ability to send remittances back to their families.
A recent independent report titled, “Jails Fargo” found that the fourth largest U.S. bank has built an investment strategy around the for-profit prison industry, investing in the mass incarceration that continues to inflate the number of Americans behind bars. Currently more than 7.2 million Americans are in jail or on parole, by far the largest prison population of any country in the world.
Although the social problems created by Wall Street are extensive, the focus continuing to drive the movement forward at Macalester and other university campuses remains the issue of tuition and student debt.
The average university tuition at a private college or university in the U.S. currently stands at $32,026 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Public institutions, once an affordable option for lower income students, now have an average tuition of $13,564 per year, according to the same center.
For Macalester, a prestigious small liberal arts school with an enrollment of 2,000, tuition has ballooned to a whopping $54,293 per year making it one of the most expensive schools in the U.S.
In most of the industrialized world, especially among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a college education is viewed as a right of citizenship for qualified students rather than a luxury for the wealthy elite. In Quebec, the student struggle focused on a rights based approach, declaring that any increase in tuition, no matter how marginal, is unacceptable.
As Thomas notes, the successful student protest movement in Quebec staving off a proposed 75 percent tuition increase serves as an inspiration and potential blueprint for how she and other student leaders would like to see the movement grow nationally in the coming years, beyond the Wells Fargo divestment campaign.
‘Kick Wall Street off campus’
One of the driving forces behind the divestment campaign has been the national group United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), a growing coalition of students demanding that college and universities invest student funds ethically with a focus on smaller banks and corporations that do not employ sweatshop labor.
“One thing that I personally was working very hard on was making the campaign spread to other schools. It is part of the national United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) campaign. We are hoping to take the campaign to other private school campuses in the Twin Cities,” added Thomas.
With more than 150 chapters on college and university campuses across the U.S., the burgeoning movement will likely continue through 2013 after students return from winter vacation and as winter begins to loosen its grip in the coming months.
At the end of next month, USAS will hold its annual two-day conference in Miami, Fla. to train student leaders in organizing techniques. Hundreds of student leaders are expected to attend, a sign that students are beginning to realize that unfair lending and increasing debt remains a growing problem that must be confronted. For many, their chance at a decent education means years of debt to universities and big banks, like Wells Fargo.
The movement may be small, but the expectations are high among student leaders working to broaden support for the movement in 2013. “Nationally we can be an example, Minnesota can be the catalyst for a model that can make a lot of change in the community. Hopefully we’ll have been the student voice of this larger movement,” added Thomas.