Students must recognize personal debt as political issue by Alyssa Figueroa

"When we deal with our burdens alone — which we often do — we establish them as personal and, in turn, depoliticize our struggles. It is time to make personal problems political ones. We often think of increasing student debt, the financial crisis or corporate greed in terms of abstractions — societal structures that are confusing, immense and impossible to change. We forget that student debt is the amount of money students owe to loan agencies, that the financial crisis is your friend’s house getting foreclosed and that corporate greed is the meager wages your roommate receives from his employer."

"If we express our anger to others instead of internalizing it, we can help show those around us that they are not in this struggle alone. When we see that student debt is not only how much debt you are in, but also how much debt everyone who surrounds you is in, it becomes less of an abstraction and more of a reality we all share."