Swimming with the student loan sharks

Swimming with the student loan sharks

I'm from a very unhappy medium in the lower middle class. As an electrician my mom made just enough money to disqualify me for a Pell Grant, but nowhere near enough to fill the gap between scholarships and tuition at Brandeis University. The "solution" was $50,000 in loans.

The first monthly payment on my Perkins Loan hit just after I moved to New York, and was equal to roughly all my money. The kicker: I received the bill several days after it was due. I'd just moved, and their confusion as to my whereabouts was perfectly reasonable. It was still terrifying, but nothing seemed amiss. The obvious solution would be to get in touch with Campus Partners, the company in charge of the loan, to explain my situation and get everything squared away. That should be easy enough...if Campus Parners answered their phones.

Or, after taking half an hour to answer their phones, they didn't hang up.

Or if their phone operators weren't specifically instructed to obscure and omit relevant information, even when specifically and repeatedly asked.

Or if they made it possible to get in touch with someone with any authority.

Or if they had an email address, or any other way to get in touch with them online.

After several days of calling Campus Partners despite their determined resistance, I learned that I could submit a forbearance request. In paper. No electronic documents allowed, even though an electronic document would be far quicker and easier for everyone. Apparently Campus Partners was only willing to process urgent legal documents in the least efficient form possible, which seemed to match their “delay and ignore” M.O. just fine.

Putting together this forbearance application took time. It required documentation of income, which is hard to pull together when you've just moved twice in a single month and commute four hours a day day. It also required a printer, which I didn't have.

It took a few weeks to put this form together, but just as I was about to send it - while at the post office, just before I sealed the envelope - Brandeis financial services called me and told me I could submit it electronically, straight to them. When I mentioned Campus Partners' behavior to them, they were concerned, and said they'd look into it.

Brandeis also told me it might be a good idea to consolidate my loans, to which I replied, "Huh?" Campus Partners had left out the fact that I could mash my Perkins Loan together with my Stafford Loan (whose monthly payments were based on my income) so I wouldn't have to pay extra money each month. In short, I’d be home free, at least in the short term.

After sending out the forbearance application and the loan consolidation request, I felt a weight lift off my chest, followed immediately by suspicion. If Brandeis could accept the form electronically at a moment's notice, why did Campus Partners need a hardcopy and several weeks to process it?

                       

Ah well, it wasn’t my problem. My forms were in, and I was set, right? Right.

About three weeks later, I got another letter from Campus Partners. Looking at the envelope, I nodded. This would be the confirmation that they'd received and processed my documents. Still nodding, still smiling, I tore open the envelope to find a...

                                                 

final demand letter?

I blinked and read it again. No, it definitely said "FINAL DEMAND LETTER", and it was definitely threatening to send my loan to a collections agency if I didn't pay up now.

After freaking out for ten minutes, I contacted Campus Partners to check if they'd received the form I sent two weeks ago. They said they hadn't. I then called my mom, Brandeis's financial department, and my boss, looking for some sort of way out of this. I also contacted an old mentor of mine, who mentioned that student loan servicers have a shady reputation, and that this one seemed shadier than most.

That put me on edge. Since they'd started sending me letters in May, Campus Partners' correspondence had been continually late. Feeling a bit sick, I took a closer look at the letter, and more importantly, at its envelope.

 

Dated July 12th...

...and postmarked July 23rd.

As you can see, the letter is dated July 12^th, but postmarked July 23^rd. For some reason, Campus Partners delayed urgent correspondence by 11 days, and deliberately sending my loan into collections seems the only motive for doing so.

In the past three months, I've seen Campus Partners make themselves difficult to contact, obscure relevant information, deceive both me and Brandeis University, fail to acknowledge receipt of forms, and send forms late to prevent me from responding.

I was lucky. When I spoke to Brandeis again, I learned they'd already pushed through their forms, and I was in the clear. But what if I weren't? What if someone else, dealing with this company, hadn't kept hammering at their phones for weeks on end? What if their forms got stuck in the mail? What if Brandeis hadn't picked the exact right moment to call? I don’t want to think of that.

And frankly, I shouldn’t have to. If our education and our livelihoods depend on the good faith and credit of student loan servicers, it is Brandeis’s responsibility to ensure that we can rely on them. It is unconscionable that this university deals with a company that deceives and robs those students it should aid and protect. Brandeis needs to vet its student loan servicers carefully and actively monitor their behavior to prevent this sort of abuse.

         

Campus Partners is a loan shark in graduation robes. You shouldn't have to with them, and Brandeis University shouldn’t make you.

An abridged version of this story has been published on the Brandeis Hoot.

                                                                                        

On Yom Kippur

With the help of several wonderful friends, I think I've finally been able to understand and parse the meaning of Yom Kippur and Judaism this year. It’s been wonderful and painful and enlightening, and I feel I’ve become a better person, a better version of myself, for it.

Have I?

I've been striving to understand the holiday through action: reading through the prayers in full even if i don't understand or agree with them, finding small ways to do good, to do better. But I've failed. That doesn't mean it was pointless. But I have failed.

I have not apologized to those I've wronged. I've been callous to friends and family, taking their presence and their love for granted. I have not forced myself to confront my own behavior, to better it.

The last of those, the least, I can make right.

When I graduated college, I had to move back home. And I hated it. Despite my mom's efforts to compromise, to support me, to help me be comfortable, I felt stuck, imprisoned. Alone, uprooted from the community I built with my friends in college, lost.

I wasn't wrong for feeling that way. Isolation brought out the worst in me: my loneliness, my moodiness, my tendency to view others as resources. I could feel myself becoming a worse person, and my awareness just made me hate it that much more. If I wanted to be the person I wanted to be, I would have to get back to where I belonged.

With little else to do, I worked toward that obsessively. In the name of keeping myself moving forward, I blinded myself to everything but my goals. That I eventually succeeded does not justify my behavior at the time. I didn't think about my past, and I was careless for the consequences of my actions in the present.

I abandoned friendships and burnt bridges. I was callous and distant to those around me. I relied too much of the kindness and support of a few friends without a thought for their own needs. I may not have hurt them, but I did take advantage of their generosity.

When you start to see someone as a hero, it's easy to forget they're human. It's easy to forget they need care too.

I'm sorry.

I can't fix the way I acted last year, but this year, I will be better. Where I once ran from others, I will stand by them. Where I once burnt bridges, I will build them. Where I once took love, I will give it.

I will fail, of course. I understand this. But if I can read this post a year from now and say honestly that I am a better person than I was today...

...well, that's worth something.

Matt Stover's Test of Metal puts us at the labyrinth's heart

I've played Magic: the Gathering since I was pretty young, but I make a point of not reading the licensed tie-in novels. To put it bluntly, they're not very good; at best, a guilty pleasure. In fact, I probably wouldn't have opened Test of Metal at all if not for one small detail: Matt Stover's name on the cover. A long time ago in a town far, far away, I read his novelization of Star Wars Episode III, and found it far better than the actual movie. Okay, I thought. This could be worth my time.

And it was.

Under Matt Stover's hand, what could have easily been Another Stupid Contract Novel becomes a genuinely deep discussion of how power stifles understanding and how trial and insight can help us become the best versions of ourselves. It’s about changing and becoming the person you need to be, and then, when that person is no longer the right person, becoming again.

Particularly brilliant is its labyrinth motif. There's much discussion of their design and purpose, but the true stroke of genius is Stover's careful eye toward structure. Test of Metal isn't just about labyrinths; it is a labyrinth, circling around and around until we end at the middle: the center, the goal, the answer. And like our antihero Tezzeret, we you don’t learn the solution so much as we become the person at the center, the person who understands themselves and the nature of the puzzle.

In a labyrinth, power is weakness, because having power makes us impatient, simple, direct. Power entices us to cut straight to the goal…but a labyrinth has no goal. There is no prize, no treasure at the center; the treasure is who you become by following its path. The center isn't a destination, it's just a signpost marking the end of the journey. The journey is the trial, and the trial is its own reward.

Even if you don't play Magic, I'd pick up this book. Some unfortunate casual sexism aside, Stover has crafted in Test of Metal a work of keen insight into the nature of human growth and progression.

Read it once to reach the center, to understand the puzzle. Then read it again