National Attorney General Action

[ajabsdlgnasekr]

_This action is for everyone who lives in MA or IL or any state with a DEMOCRAT Attorney General. (If you have a Republican Attorney General in your state, then keep reading).

While we keep our eyes on the big picture and fight for free public higher ed and a jubilee for all student debt, we have some time before the next administration to fight for a full discharge for former for-profit students.

The courts have made their judgement: the 2016 borrower defense to repayment (DTR) rules must go into effect.

But we cannot expect Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education to actually process your DTR applications without being forced to do it. So far we have had to fight tooth and nail for every penny of relief we have gotten, and that is not going to change. We must try to force them to cancel for-profit borrowers’ debts.

One way we can do that is by working with state Attorneys General.

State AGs in Massachusetts and Illinois have already filed group wide discharges. In a recent case the courts have ruled that the Department of Education cannot merely ignore those group-wide DTRs.

The Debt Collective believes that pushing state Attorneys General to ask for a discharge for everyone in their state is one of the best ways to get lots of people discharges in the next two years.

We have worked up a template letter for you to start with. But please add information about your own story.

A template letter for MASSACHUSETTS AND ILLINOIS can be found here: For-Profit College Collective Attorney General Action - MA and IL - Google Docs

The goal of this letter is to ask your State AG to push Congress to hold hearings to find out why Betsy DeVos has stalled the borrower defense process.

In other states with democrat AGs, the goal is to get state AGs to work with Debt Collective members to file for group-wide discharges.

You can find a template letter for those other states here:

Attorney General Action - for DEMOCRAT AGs

If your state AG is a Republican, we are happy to work with you on a custom letter. Since the GOP is Trump and DeVos’s party, things are more complicated with them. So just post on this forum that you would like to write to your Republican AG, and we will help.

Please post back here on the Debt Collective platform so we know which state AGs are taking action.

Let’s do this!

[Ami_Schneider]

In Illinois, Lisa Madigan decided she was not going to run for re-election for Attorney General. Our new Attorney General elect is Kwame Raoul. He is also a democrat and I did find this post he made that states he is against DeVos rolling back protections.

Kwame Raoul

I had a pretty ok (probably great compared to folks in other states) relationship with Joseph Sanders from Lisa Madigan’s team, and I would like to continue along the track I have been on as far as communication with the new AG.

Any advice on how to get in touch during a transition would be helpful. I am going to reach out to Joseph Sanders as well to see if he can fill me in on who would be my contact moving forward so hopefully I will get a response on that front.

Super happy Erika Harold wasn’t elected.

[ajabsdlgnasekr]

Hi Amy, This is a good question. Seems like the thing to do is contact them and ask them how they plan do deal with the fact that ED ignored their mass discharge application? We will try to get a contact in IL for you.

[Ami_Schneider]

Awesome! Thank you! I will also work on my end and fill you in as I navigate the process

[Sanders]

Becerra in CA has definitely been taking some moves as you are aware, but it would be great to organize people to continue giving him a push. The $67 mill settlement for Corinthian students happened back in June, so where is that 6 months later? What has that really done for Corinthian students? What is the Navient lawsuit really going to do for students?

Between all the for-profits in this state, we should be able to get quite a few people writing. What is the most effective way to do this? Deliver them all together and film it? Will the Collective be gathering these letters or archiving them somehow? Just trying to think about how to make this AG delivery gain notice. If we were to deliver a bunch of the letters to multiple states AGs right before Christmas, film it, and hashtag it up to get it trending on the higher ed social media circles, maybe that might light a fire under them a bit, showing that there are students from all over the nation fighting for this and the AGs need to take it on together?

Just spit-ballin here to get ideas flowing. I think that people feel like sending their own solitary letter out into the void won’t do any good and they will just get a form letter back saying “thanks for your concerns!” If it is a part of some meta action at multiple places they feel more a part of something I think.

[ajabsdlgnasekr]

Hi Sanders, We are going to do more than just send letters. We are going to reach out to AGs (at least the friendly ones, which is a couple of dozen) so they know to expect these letters. We have also been talking to the Massachusetts AG who told us that AG offices do pay attention to letters from constituents that come in - even if it is just a few. I like your idea of doing something on social media too!

[Joseph_White]

Hey guys,
The current Missouri Attorney General is Josh Hawley. However, he just won the Missouri senate seat in a contested race with Claire McKaskill. So, his replacement is up in the air at this point.

https://www.ago.mo.gov/about-us/contact-us

Missouri Attorney General’s Office
Supreme Court Building
207 W. High St.
P.O. Box 899
Jefferson City, MO 65102 Map
Phone: 573-751-3321
Fax: 573-751-0774

[Thomas_Gokey]

This is how I join the discussion.

[Sanders]

I invited “I am Ai” members here from Facebook in order to start organizing for this AG effort, so hopefully we will start seeing some of them soon.

[ThreeDlife]

“I am AI” member here! It’s refreshing to see people starting to make a movment about this. I graduated from the for-profit Art Institute Of Colorado and my degree is now worthless since the school is closing for good this month and was no longer accredited nearly a year ago. Any help to get my fraudulent loans forgiven would be greatly appreciated!

[Toniclark08]

Hi! I Am AI member here. I’ve been following this extremely closely for years. I have reached out to my state attorney general (Curtis Hill of Indiana) in the past with no luck. Here was my response. I used this template to, once again, reach out to him and hope for a more valuable response.

[ajabsdlgnasekr]

Hi Toni, Welcome to the Debt Collective community and thanks for reaching out to your AG. Republican AGs are going to be harder to convince to take action, since they are less likely to want to defy Betsy DeVos. Let’s brainstorm other ways to keep the pressure on.

[Thomas_Gokey]

Good job Toni!!!

The response they sent makes it sound like they are treating this as an individual complaint. Did you submit it through their complaint forms?

We might have better luck just using the template and mailing/emailing it to their main office.

But as Ann said, it could be like banging our head against a brick wall with these right wing AGs.

Then again if enough people follow your lead, they might take a closer look. Let’s get more people in IN to send a letter about this.

Great job!

[Jennifer_Lezan]

I am Aier here as well. I’ve made it a point to follow up with the AG and their team as I received an actual response from Ai after I put in my complaint. They basically stated that they didn’t anything wrong…I followed up with the AG back in October with my response that I didn’t think the schools’ response resolved any issues. I am still waiting on a follow up and requested that they investigate further on behalf of myself and the many other Illinois residents this affects. While our AG has been a huge asset in the most recent lawsuits, there is still more to be done. In addition to the AG - I also reached out and sent in my file to our Senator - Dick Durbin. I think we need to continue to go higher and higher. I still haven’t received a follow up, but as a few others from Illinois mentioned, there has been a transition with Kwame now transitioning into his new role. Yet, I think it is vital for those of us taking the time to send in letters and file complaints continue to be vocal. Too many will try to ignore us, but it is important that we not allow that to happen, we have to be so loud they can’t ignore us anymore. Thanks for continuing to do what you and the team do Ann. You’ve sparked something deep within many of us to not give up on this fight. It’s only just beginning. – Jen

[Ami_Schneider]

So for Illinois, it looks like my contact is still there at least for the time being, so I sent my letter to his direct email as well as submitting it to the main Illinois AG website. I am not sure if he will be staying on after everything is transitioned, but I did receive a response on another matter about my dtr, so I am just waiting for a response on this now.

[ajabsdlgnasekr]

If anyone here is from Pennsylvania - or if you know anyone who lives in PA - please share this link with them. Pennsylvania Attorney General Action

[sean_newberry]

“I am AI” member, I submitted a letter to the Illinois Attorney General, I am posting to hopefully encourage more people to send letters and hopefully we can get a big push in the right direction here.