This action is for everyone who attended a for-profit school who currently lives in South Dakota (so even if you used to live somewhere else or the for-profit school was located somewhere else, if you now live in South Dakota this is for you).
As you probably already know, the Department of Education has been letting individual defense to repayment (DTR) applications sit on a shelf and gather dust. Many people have been waiting years for a decision on their individual application. The Department of Education’s strategy here seems to be to wait it out. They want to ignore these DTRs long enough for them to have time to rewrite the rules. Once they have rewritten the rules, they will be able to deny many more people the debt relief they deserve. At the moment we have no mechanism to force the Department of Education to actually process and make a decision on an individual DTR.
BUT, the good news is that there is another option here. The Attorney General can file a group discharge application which would cover all students who attended for-profits like Corinthian, ITT Tech, AI and other schools. Unlike an individual DTR, we do have a way to force them to respond to these group wide DTRs. In a recent court case the judge ruled that the Department of Education cannot ignore these group DTRs in the same way that they are ignoring individual DTRs.
So what we want to do is organize everyone in South Dakota who has attended one of these schools to email the Attorney General’s office, and their Senator, and tell them to file a group wide DTR. We’ve created a template of for you to follow below.
After you add your story, copy and paste it into an email and send it to the South Dakota AG at this address
consumerhelp@state.sd.us
Be sure to BCC Thomas@DebtCollective.com so we can keep track of everyone who is sending letters and organize accordingly.
Also copy and paste the entire letter here if John Thune is your Senator : Contact - U.S. Senator John Thune
Copy and paste it here if Mike Rounds is your Senator : Email Mike | Contact | U.S. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota
We suggest making the topic of your contact with your senator RE: Group Discharge of Fraudulent Federal Student Loans
You can find out who your senator is by a simple google search, or you can find all your reps here on Facebook, and even hit up their social media: Town Hall
Please make sure to join the Debt Collective website and the For-profit College Collective if you send a complaint in, so we can organize collectively around getting these loans discharged.
The template letter is here:
RE: Group Discharge of Fraudulent Federal Student Loans
I am a constituent and a former student of a predatory for-profit college. I am writing to South Dakota Attorney General Doug Peterson and U.S. Senators Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse to file what is known as a group discharge application under the 2016 regulations of the Borrower Defense to Repayment law. This would help people like me and many others in South Dakota who have been defrauded by a predatory for-profit school. Other states Attorneys General have already taken this step, and we believe that as our representatives, you must do what is right.
First, I recognize that the Republican party has been a leader on things like bankruptcy protections provided to us by The Constitution of the United States of America. Bills like HR 770 introduced by Republican Representative John Katko show us that your party cares about these issues. For your efforts in this area, I and thousands of others thank you. I have already filed an individual Borrower Defense to Repayment, but the Department of Education so far has refused to make a decision on this claim. We are not wanting bankruptcy, because we were defrauded by a school that broke the law. The 2016 law requires that schools that broke the law in your state be recognized for a Group Wide Discharge, and we expect you to use the law on behalf of your constituents. The Department of Education is illegally ignoring these claims long enough until they can rewrite the rules in 2020 and then deny these claims. We don’t want that to happen, as it is our legal right for you to do something about this. We are voters, and we will keep in mind the actions of this office when casting our ballots.
Unlike the individual borrower defense applications, a federal judge in Williams v. DeVos ruled that the Department of Education cannot ignore a group discharge application when filed by a state Attorney General. This is why even though I have already filed an individual claim, a group discharge application is needed unless you can convince the Department of Education to start processing our individual claims.
I attended [NAME OF SCHOOL] in [CITY] from [YEARS ATTENDED]. I am writing to tell you my story of being preyed on and scammed by my school.
[TELL YOUR STORY HERE.]
I am now organizing with other defrauded borrowers as part of the Debt Collective, a membership organization for people in debt. I am writing in the hope that you will take action to ensure that my federal student loans, as well as the loans of every person in our state who was scammed by a for-profit school, are canceled. For the last two years, Betsy DeVos has refused to cancel predatory loans even though the law requires that she do so. As the top law enforcement officer in South Dakota, I am confident that you will do all you can to help by filing a group discharge application.
I look forward to hearing from you and learning more about how I and other members of the Debt Collective can eventually get relief for schools that were targeting Military Veterans and the poor for their educational benefits. My school targeted and defrauded me.
Regards,
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR ADDRESS]
[YOUR EMAIL]
[YOUR PHONE NUMBER]