By Lauren Nutall

Howard University News Service

In 2023, at 77 years old, Michael Haran suffered a heart attack. It was another blow for the Santa Rosa resident, who was still recovering from aggressive radiation treatment after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2022.

Haran was forced to relocate to an assisted living facility, at his family’s insistence. “As my daughter says, ‘You gotta admit it. You gotta face up to it. You’re not a spring chicken anymore,’” Haran recalled.

“I can live there on half of my Social Security, and they provide room and board, medical and dental. And they have a memory treatment facility, and they have a skilled nursing facility, so it’s all set up to grow old there,” he said.

But Haran was also facing another harsh reality: He was mired in thousands of dollars’ worth of student debt with no relief in sight. And he isn’t alone. 

Forbes reports that more than half of students who attend university leave with debt and that the average balance increases per age group. With the presidential election around the corner, student debtors like Haran worry about once again being left behind come 2025. 

When he first decided to pursue his M.A. in education at Sonoma State University in 2015, Haran didn’t foresee the financial pitfall he’d end up in.

He also didn’t anticipate that his achievement would be cut short by sudden health complications, preventing him from working at his non-profit organization called the Institute of Progressive Education and Learning, which is what prompted him to return to school in the first place. 

“The idea is to rewrite the curriculum to get kids to stay in school, where learning can be entertainment,” he said about the program, which aims to serve underrepresented children and restructure the standard K-12 educational pipeline.

But, burdened by his debt and still physically recuperating, Haran has had to put these dreams on hold indefinitely.

Now 78 years old, the San Francisco native is still dealing with the repercussions of seeking a higher education. Haran estimates that he currently has $39,000 worth of student debt, nearly one fifth of it being accrued interest. 

“If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t do it because the M.A. was important,” he said. “But all of my writing now and all my research is done through the internet. Google it, and you can get into any library in the world through the internet.”

Though he plans to work virtually to pay what he can of his existing credit card debt, Haran’s hope is that the next presidential administration addresses the rising student loan crisis. He’s betting on Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I thought it would be waived long before now. But then the Republicans jumped in, you know, and put the kibosh on it,” he said. 

“They’re saying, ‘Well, you know, it’s a legitimate debt. You did borrow the money. And, you know, many people have paid it back. Why shouldn’t you pay it back?’ And I understand that, and I agree with that to a certain extent. But then, on the other hand, a lot of the debt is really unfair and it’s crushing a lot of people. They can’t buy a home.”

Though Harris has not publicly shared her plans for addressing student loan cancellations and it’s been relatively glossed over on the campaign trail, that hasn’t stopped Haran from pledging his support for her.

“If Kamala gets elected, we’ll have a better chance of getting it waived or forgiven,” he continued. “If Trump gets elected, not so much. You can forget it.” 

Haran also fears what life under a second Trump administration could mean and believes that the former President has only emboldened right-winged individuals since exiting office in 2021. “I’m scared to death if Trump gets elected,” he said. “All we know is democracy.”

Haran anticipates that this election cycle will spur a monumental voter turnout for Harris. “This is the first election since Roe vs. Wade was thrown out, so I think there’s going to be a huge number of women voting, and I think that’s going to put her over the top,” he said. “I mean, it’s going to be a nail biter, but I think she’s going to – let’s hope – she wins.”

Other debtors feel similarly to Haran – disapproving of former President Trump and tentatively hopeful at the possibility of a Harris-Walz Administration.   

Nick Marcil

Nick Marcil, a 26-year-old organizer, works for the Debt Collective, a resistance organization that advocates for mass debt relief in the country. Marcil graduated from state school in Pennsylvania in 2020 before obtaining his masters in higher education and student affairs. 

Having witnessed his family’s own financial struggles and seeing how volatile the job market is, Marcil’s only criteria for a college was simple: It needed to be cheap.

“It made me kind of know for myself that I’m going to have to be the one to make sure that I can go to college. So it very much predicated me on thinking like, ‘What is going to be the best thing for my buck,’” he said. 

Still, despite working as a residence assistant and being heavily involved in campus life, Marcil currently owes between $10,000 and$20,000 dollars in student loans. 

Like Haran, he feels more confident in Harris’ ability to cancel the debt. However, he has become increasingly disappointed and frustrated by the current administration’s handling of the conflict in Palestine and its failure to forgive student loans in the past, despite pressure.

“Why is it that we’r going to fund bombs overseas and not try to make sure that people kind of have an education or support various other programs and things that we need desperately here to support folks,” he said.

Still, he feels a mixture of “hope and determination” going into the presidential election and is optimistic that organizations like the Debt Collective will continue to fight for nationwide debt relief, regardless of the outcome.

“I am hopeful that we can continue to push in the ending months, if you will, of the Biden administration for some real action to happen,” he said.

Gail F. Gardner

Gail F. Gardner, 77 an activist and author expected her debt to be forgiven in her lifetime.

However, after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a student loan forgiveness plan from the Biden-Harris Administration that would have given her a clean slate, the Florida resident remains weighed down by more than $500,000 in student loan debt, an outstanding balance that only continues to grow.

As a single mother, Gardner first pursued her master’s degree believing that, by doing so, she’d be able to create material change in her life and her family’s. 

However, after receiving her M.A. in English education and serving as a public school teacher for two decades, she discovered that she did not have the financial security to retire from the workforce entirely. So, at 65 years old, she returned to school, this time to get her master’s degree in pastoral counseling. 

A survivor of sexual assault, Gardner used this degree to establish a non-profit organization, the Gail F. Gardner Social Justice Association Inc., to help women in marginalized communities who have suffered from abuse.  

Her activism has led to the creation of a revolutionary law in her namesake called “Gail’s Law,” which requires the state of Florida to track DNA evidence in rape kits. Still, Gardner is routinely reminded of her exorbitant bills, a direct consequence of the skyrocketing interest on student loans. If she doesn’t see her loans forgiven under Biden’s presidency, Gardner hopes to see it erased come 2025 under Harris. 

“I feel a lot of optimism,” Gardner said. “I really don’t want to put that in some other hands,” she later continued. “I really want this administration to take care of it and if that doesn’t help then the other administration will take care of it. If Harris and the Democrats win, I know it will be taken care of, but I don’t want to deal with that as a chance.

“I’m seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for a lot of things that’s going to help us keep our democracy.”

Sarah Bundy

Sarah Bundy, 53, lives with her husband, a 20-year-old daughter and two grandchildren in Rochester, N.Y. Bundy works in the city’s public paratransit department where she coordinates transportation for the disabled. 

Despite the additional streams of income, the family struggles to stay afloat and, like Haran and Marcil, Bundy owes a significant amount of student loans to the federal government – roughly $60,000 – which eats into her family’s cost of living. 

“It’s one of those things that’s always hanging over you,” she said. “And, we talk a lot about how it impacts you financially, which is huge, but also there’s a psychological burden there that maybe people don’t pay a lot of attention to. We should because it’s kind of like, no matter what you’re doing throughout your day, it’s always there.”

When Bundy first attended undergraduate university in the late nineties, like several of her peers, she was struck by the new emerging technology. But Bundy soon found herself drawn to history and opted to continue her studies in that field instead. When the time came to enter the workforce, however, she and her classmates were met with disappointment.

“The jobs weren’t there,” she said. The opportunities that were promised to young adults – even in tech – were suddenly gone and students like Bundy were left to shoulder their mounting debt with no clue on how they would pay it.

Eventually, the mother of two landed a job at a telecom company where she continued to work until 2008, when the global financial crisis upended the country’s economy and once again left her unemployed. 

Bundy later found work in the public sector as a direct support professional in New York. She was just scraping by financially when the Department of Education started garnishing her earnings after she defaulted on her student loans.

“It was so harsh,” she said. “At that point, I was working as a DSP, taking care of the disabled. And, it’s a really important job, but it doesn’t pay anything.

“It was paying just barely above minimum wage for New York, which I think was like $12.50 an hour, and I was working nights, which nobody wants to work nights. And they started this garnishment, which was taking about a third of my pay, so that put me well below minimum wage.” 

But, after the coronavirus pandemic brought the country to an abrupt halt in 2021, things changed. Suddenly Bundy, who had previously been marked as an “unskilled worker,” was now considered a hero for her work as a DSP. 

“When the pandemic started, we couldn’t get PPE at all there,” Bundy said, referring to the housing facility where she administered medicine. 

“You couldn’t get masks,” she continued. “They just were not available. I ended up sewing masks for the facility, and I couldn’t even buy fabric. I couldn’t buy fabric, and I couldn’t buy elastic for the bands. So I ended up cutting up leggings and using them for headbands, for the masks.”

A friend of Bundy’s, who also worked in the public sector, managed to mail her some HEPA filter vacuum cleaner bags, which acted as a substitute for the standard N95 mask. “So I was putting these filters into these cloth masks and bringing them to the facility for everybody. We were doing so much,” Bundy recalled.

In response to her new title, the Department of Education began to return the garnishments they had taken and, for a moment, things were looking up for Bundy.

But, as the praise slowed and the world began to move on, the federal government quietly began garnishing her wages once again, leaving Bundy back at square one. 

Because of how much student debt has impacted her quality of life, Bundy found it hard to encourage her own children to attend university. Instead, both of her kids went to trade schools and found success in their respective fields. Still, she lives with the grief that her family was not afforded the same experiences that she had.

“She should have gone to art school, you know,” Bundy said about her daughter, who works with her at the paratransit service while also running an Etsy shop. 

“And if we had been of a social class where you send your kids to art school, which is not anywhere near where we are, she could have been an illustrator,” Bundy continued. “She could have gone into fine art. There’s so much that she really could have done, and I’m glad that she still does it, but it’s just heartbreaking, just watching people’s talent not being realized.”

Bundy hopes to see an improvement in her situation with this presidential election, but she doesn’t think that can happen under a Republican administration. 

“They do everything they can to turn people against each other, rather than put policies in place that are actually going to help,” she said. “I’ve got much more faith in the Democrats. Not a lot of faith, but I have more faith that they’re going to actually do programs.” 

Bundy, who will be working as a poll worker on Election Day, has also been turned off by the anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant rhetoric she has witnessed from the Trump campaign as well as the possibility of Project 2025, the detailed political blueprint that the Heritage Foundation has outlined in the case of a Republican presidency. 

“They’ve done a lot to, try to get people’s emotions up, try to turn people against each other,” she said. “My daughter is of childbearing age… elections matter. They matter a lot, and it’s a lot of anxiety.”

Bundy wants to make one thing clear to both Harris and Trump, however. “I would want them to know that there’s a crisis coming, and they need to get ahead of it now,” she said. 

“There’s already a social security crisis coming, and there’s a crisis with people not being able to pay this debt,” she continued. “And it’s not a small group, it’s millions of people. And when those garnishments start back up, when those payments start-up in full, when all of the forbearances are gone, with the amount of inflation that we have now, it’s not going to be sustainable. It just isn’t, and people are going to be suffering.”

Lauren Nutall is a HU News Service reporter.