The Daily Tar Heel
URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2012/01/film_screening_0126
Current Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 10:37:24 -0400
UNC Students for a Democratic Society host movie screening
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Students discuss the film “Default: the Student Loan Documentary” via Skype with the director of the film, Aurora Meneghello at a screening put on by UNC Students for a Democratic Society.
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Students for a Democratic Society has begun preparing for its Feb. 10 march to the UNC-system Board of Governors by hosting events to recruit and educate the student body about rising tuition.
On Wednesday, the organization hosted a screening of, “Default: the Student Loan Documentary,” before discussing the plans for its protest, in order to inform students about the dangers of being in debt.
“We want to have a discussion to get students talking,” said Steve Milder, a graduate student and member of SDS.
The board will be voting on tuition increases for system schools Feb. 10.
Members of the organization said that although the group has focused on national issues in the past, tuition is at the forefront right now.
“We’ve been working on tuition even before they announced huge increases because tuition had doubled since 2003,” Milder said.
The documentary showed those attending that student debt is the largest form of debt in the United States, and tuition hikes would only make that worse, said Eric Bost, co-chairman of SDS.
Following the screening, students involved in the Education Justice Alliance, a coalition of student groups that formed after the protest of the Board of Trustees meeting in November, discussed how to get other students to protest tuition increases with them.
“We want to broaden the struggle over tuition increases and get more people involved,” Bost said.
Milder said students have been given little say in the tuition debate, and that needs to change.
“No one was showing the students how the process works, how tuition is raised,” he said.
“We want students to have a forum to decide what action they need to take.”
Students spoke to one of the directors of the documentary, Aurora Meneghello, about the cost and benefits of higher education in the United States via Skype after the screening.
She said students often don’t think about how much money they will make in a future career compared with how much they spend on tuition in the U.S.
A few students expressed concern about being able to pay back the debt they might incur under tuition hikes.
Senior philosophy major Amanda Ellis said she is worried about finding a job.
“I’ve accepted that I’m not going to make money from this degree,” she said.
Another issue students expressed at the meeting was the constant uncertainty that the tuition hikes have left about how much money they will owe.
“Students should come into college knowing what they’re going to pay for four years,” said junior Joseph Terrell.
Members of the organization said they plan to arrange transportation for students from throughout the UNC system to attend the board Feb. 10 meeting.
“We still have a chance to speak up,” Milder said.
Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.
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9 comments
Why don’t you go make your case before George Soros? He can pay off your Sally Mae debt for your Masters in Cultural Antropology. He’s rich, in fact he’s a .0001 percenter.
The documentary showed those attending that student debt is the largest form of debt in the United States, and tuition hikes would only make that worse, said Eric Bost, co-chairman of SDS.
Well let’s make some analogies between student loan debt/Sallie Mae and the real estate crash/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac:
Arnie Duncan, Erskine Bowles, Holden Thorpe et al. would be your Barney Franks, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorlicks.
Your Humanities Department Chairs would be your Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, and Bank of Amigo executive suiters.
Your Humanities professors would be your commissioned Liar Loan Mortgage originators.
And you prospective defaulters would be the innumate economic ignorami who had no qualifications to even finance a jelly donut.
I wonder if this new SDS is anyhing like the old SDS from the 1960s? You know, the socialists that spawned the Weather Underground terrorist movement? How about it SDS- why recycle the name of such a vile organization?
Yes, cause socialist are so vile, more so than the oppressive hands of capitalists that kill, exploit and enslave people every day. GET OVER IT! This is 2012, not the Cold War.
Nice attempt at misdirection. But when it comes to killing, expoliting, and enslaving, no one does it better than the socialist and communisits. Mao, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, the Castros, and the North Koreans? Remember them? And thats just a partial list. So try answering the question and forget the propoganda and buzzwords.
Just because the Cold War ended doesn’t mean the struggle between ideologies has ended. While the Right may have slept too long after the Cold War, we are awake now to the threat of the New Left (which of course, is the same as it ever was).
To the struggle!
Here come the reactionaries!
Marching along in hobnail boots!
Seriously yall, get a life. Go laugh at some poor people or something.
Also, the Weather Underground was a faction group of the SDS. At that time, 3 separate groups claimed to be the true SDS. So the argument about bringing back a “vile” group..? I dunno.
Finally, go read about the connection between capitalism and fascism.
Let me give you, and the DTH readers, a little history lesson.
In 1922, the big capital interests in Italy decided to go for the whole thing. Representatives of the federation of industry and the federation of agriculture, which was an agribusiness firm, and representatives of the national banking association, all met together with Mussolini and planned the fascist march on Rome.
Mussolini planned this with the leading capitalists of Italy. This is almost never mentioned in the accounts about the march on Rome. These capitalists contributed 20 million lyre toward that undertaking.
By 1930, most of the big industrialists and bankers were underwriting the NAZI party.
What happened with this injection of multiple millions of marks? Hitler ejected his party into the public sphere. NAZIS won 107 seats in the Reichstag, and this continued to grow. The Italian and German monopolists and big cartels also had a direct interest in an expansionist military regime, to compensate for the decline in investment opportunities with huge arm contracts. They wanted and actively advocated for a large “defense budget:” a source of enormous capital investment and profits.
You didn’t learn that in school did you? Socialism may have killed many people, but capitalism and fascism have killed millions more.. and there’s the whole capitalist slavery thing too..
So step the fuck back with your ignorant shit.
I love the contrast between the banality of this article and the vitriol in the comments. I think I am being fair when I boil this article down to: Student group shows documentary on student debt and speaks with film’s director. Student group connects rising student debt to universally rising college tuition. Student group to protest University’s plan to raise tuition.
But the comments! That sentence doesn’t even need a verb because what do you say to “Why recycle the name (Students for a Democratic Society) of such a vile organization” and the vivid poetics of ‘financing a jelly donut.’
I’m glad Shade decided to spice up the predictable ‘compare people to dictators’ routine with some underutilized regimes, the Kher Rouge and the Castros, and avoided the overused ‘Hitler’ comparison.
I no longer see any point in reading these articles in print, because I would miss the best part. And I never would have learned that I can simply send George Soros like an email or something, and he will pay off my debt. That’s good to know.
@Socialist
“You didn’t learn that in school did you? Socialism may have killed many people, but capitalism and fascism have killed millions more.. and there’s the whole capitalist slavery thing too..
So step the fuck back with your ignorant shit.”
My “ignorant shit” tells me that Stalin was responsible for the slaughter of more civilians within the borders of the USSR (many “useful idiot” Jews) than the number of civians (mostly Jews, Gypsies and Margaret Samger genetic defects) Hitler killed in all of NAZI occupied Europe. Chairman Mao slaughtered more civilian co-nationals than did the Emperor of Japan did of Chinese and Koreans. Pol Pot slaughtered more co-nationals in Laos than were ever slaughtered by the combined Fascist/Capitalist dictatorships of Argentina and Chile over the last 100 years.
Capitalist slavery thing??— Gulags in Russia, manufacturing sweatshops in China that make UNC-CH sweatshirts??
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