Over My Dead Body! If This Evil Letter Isn’t Everything Wrong With Student Loans Then Nothing Is

There is so much rotten in the State of New Jersey. Yet few things stink to high heaven as badly as this letter sent to grieving parents regarding their deceased son’s NJClass student loans. The student has died, his education and the prosperous future that loan was supposed to have purchased is tragically gone forever. But even the Grim Reaper won’t stop HESAA’s demons from relentlessly pursuing his parents to pay back the loan. Saddest of all, due to unconscionable legal protections for predatory student loan lenders and a lack of public outcry, there’s nothing Mom and Dad can do about it. To their great credit they took the step to share this letter with the rest of us slaving under the HESAA student loan yoke. 

In this grossly hypocritical letter, devilish HESAA boss Teresa B. Gervasio attempts to offer the parents “condolences on your loss” – before she pile-drives them head first into the financial pavement. What follows is simply a reiteration of what has been quietly on the books for a long time. Even your untimely death will not prevent the relentless maw of HESAA Hell from devouring your family’s peace of mind and whatever is left of their financial security after laying you in the ground. 

Gervasio’s macabre letter states the facts in a monotone legalese, “In accordance with the terms and conditions of the loan note, there is no discharge of an obligation when a student is deceased, unless (emphasis added) the student is the sole borrower of the loan.” That sentence exemplifies everything that is wrong with HESAA because they always require a co-signer, usually a parent. In short, this loan sharking “Authority” just like any Mafioso, will strong-arm your family to pay off nefarious student loan debts. All this for an education that is free in other countries, like K-12 (for the time being) still is here.

The letter goes on to contradict it’s previous sentence by saying “A surviving party,” like, for example, these poor distraught parents, are “only released from repaying the loans on an exceptional basis based on financial need.” I’m sure when burying their baby the first thing they thought was “I hope our modest earnings are exceptionally low enough not to have to pay off any student loans!” HESAA in it’s cold calculation reopens their wound, telling them: “After careful consideration of the information you provided, the Authority has determined that your request does not meet the threshold for loan forgiveness. Monthly bill statements will continue to be sent to you.”

The living, flesh and blood person who typed this letter had to know that “the Authority” regards students, borrowers and cosigners, living or dead, simply as a means for fattening the coffers of the State of New Jersey. No matter how “legal” under the law, throughout any age, the action described in this letter was understood as a crime, whose offense is rank and smells to heaven. Be warned, dear reader, of the level of Hell we are dealing with in this so-called “Authority.” In time, they will answer to a higher Authority, one who suffers no thieves or suited criminals – and who will inspire an organized army of borrowers coming to reclaim a free universal education for all.