Press Release

For Immediate Release - October 23, 2006

Contact:

Trevor Kincaid 202-741-6274
Emily Hawkins 202-741-6257

Campus Progress, the youth organizing arm of the Center for American Progress, today launched its Debt Hits Hard campaign, a national effort to raise public awareness of how ineffective federal policies weaken educational opportunity and feed the dramatic growth of student debt. The campaign will use a wide range of innovative tools -- from text messaging to web ads, movie theater spots to campus tabling -- to energize young people seeking a better college financial aid deal from Washington.

Through the Debt Hits Hard campaign, Campus Progress advocates cutting student loan interest rates in half, ending wasteful subsidies to lenders that cost taxpayers billions, raising federal Pell Grants to $5100, and launching a public service ad campaign to raise awareness in low-income communities about financial aid resources. Campus Progress will contact elected officials, candidates for office, college presidents, and other leaders to promote these policy changes.

Central to the campaign are three creative 30-second videos that illustrate the woes of student debt and the consequences debt has after college.

Campus Progress is presenting the spots on YouTube, MySpace and other websites, at events and film screenings on campuses across the country, and at film festivals in cities including Washington and New Orleans. As part of an innovative $80,000 advertising campaign, the spots also will run for two weeks on 160 movie screens in nine multiplexes in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Columbus, St. Louis, and Nashville, and they will be promoted in advertisements placed on dozens of websites.

The Debt Hits Hard videos direct viewers not only to visit Campus Progress’s DebtHitsHard.org website but also to send a text message – texting the word “DEBT” to phone number 30644. At a Campus Progress event on October 18, carried live on the Internet and covered by C-SPAN, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle urged people to send text messages in support of the campaign.

The Debt Hits Hard campaign also will feature intensive organizing on the ground this fall, fueled by Campus Progress’s student representatives and chapters at over 110 U.S. colleges and universities.

Since 2000, the average cost of attending a four-year public college has increased over 40 percent. Thirty-nine percent of student loan borrowers graduate with levels of debt that finance experts consider unmanageable. Yet earlier this year, Congress cut $12 billion in student aid (enough to send 230,000 students to college for four years), allowed student loan rates to spike, and refused to raise Pell Grants. “Americans deserve access to affordable college education, and our country needs a strong, diverse population of college graduates to succeed in the global economy,” said Emily Hawkins, an issues campaign manager for Campus Progress. “Right now, when it comes to making college affordable, our leaders in Washington deserve a failing grade.”

The Debt Hits Hard videos were concepted by Eric Gross and Jon Zast and produced by Hillary Cutter.