Unforgivable debts

As Democratic Party presidential candidates promise to cancel Americans’ $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, President Donald Trump wants to end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and eliminate subsidized federal loans.

The president has proposed dropping the loan forgiveness program in every budget he’s submitted, including the 2021 fiscal year proposal released last week. Congress has not acted on his recommendation.

Created in 2007, the program forgives student debts once participants complete 10 years of monthly payments while employed full time as teachers, nurses, police officers, or as nonprofit or government workers. The first eligible borrowers started claiming their benefits in the last three years.

But those claims have not gone smoothly for many who say they made their 10 years or 120 payments only to learn they did not meet the program’s complex eligibility rules.

Librarian Lynn Wallace has student loan debt and complained in the Tulsa World about the program’s complex regulations: “Fraudulent information about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness has left me with five extra years in repayment status.” Only 62 of her 118 payments counted toward the required 120, she said.

Trump and other critics of the program say it unfairly favors some careers over others. This year’s budget proposal, like those in previous years, recommends closing the program to new applicants while keeping it open for current participants like Wallace.

The president’s proposed budget also calls for the elimination of federally subsidized loans, in which the government pays the loan’s interest while students with financial need attend school or qualify for grace periods. The changes would end complicated formulas that determine which type and amount of loan qualify for subsidies, but the burden for repaying the interest would shift completely to the student.

Other proposed changes would reward faithful repayment and protect students and parents from overborrowing in the first place. These changes would cut the U.S. Department of Education’s budget by 8 percent.

Borrowers shouldn’t plan for these reforms anytime soon. The president’s proposed budget is merely the first step in a lengthy process governed by competing ideologies.

‘Unspeakable abuse’

Police last week arrested the father of a former Sarah Lawrence College student and charged him with starting a sex cult in his daughter’s dorm. The charges include nine counts of sex trafficking, extortion, forced labor, and money laundering.

Prosecutors described how 60-year-old ex-convict Lawrence “Larry” Ray convinced his sophomore-year daughter and her friends to allow him to stay in their campus housing upon his release from prison in late 2010. Ray forged relationships with the young women, allegedly taking on a “father figure” role and conducting “therapy” sessions with them.

Ray reportedly groomed and exploited five students at the private liberal arts college in Yonkers, N.Y. He allegedly abused them physically, sexually, and psychologically and claimed they owed him money. Prosecutors said Ray directed his victims to drain their parents’ bank accounts and work for no pay at his family’s property in North Carolina. He also reportedly forced one into prostitution.

“Ray subjected his victims to almost unspeakable abuse,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said, citing a time Ray reportedly tied one young woman to a chair and placed a plastic bag over her head, nearly suffocating her. —L.E.

Guilty as charged

The younger of the two teens charged in the May 2019 deadly shooting at a suburban Denver high school pleaded guilty earlier this month to 17 felonies, including a first-degree murder charge. The attackers at STEM School Highlands Ranch wounded eight people and killed 18-year-old student Kendrick Castillo as he rushed shooters Maya “Alec” McKinney, 16, and Devon Erickson, 19. Under Colorado juvenile sentencing rules, McKinney could be eligible for parole after 25 years.

Erickson has pleaded not guilty to the same charges. His lawyers have characterized McKinney, a girl who identifies as a boy, as the ringleader and claim the younger student pressured Erickson to participate in the deadly attack.

Castillo received wide praise for his heroic actions. Officials said he kept the assault from becoming a larger tragedy. —L.E.