With little press fanfare, University of Central Florida officials on Monday presented to the Student Labor Action Project a signed agreement pledging to expand employee awareness of loan forgiveness options.
It was all smiles and laughter as Vice Presidents Rick Schell and Gordon Chavis, and Chief Human Resources Officer Shelia Daniels, entered a Millican Hall conference room to present three representatives of SLAP what symbolizes the end of a year-long campaign to promote the public service loan forgiveness program at UCF.
The program guarantees federal loan forgiveness to those who have worked in the public sector for ten years and after paying 120 monthly payments.
Courtney Gilmartin, the assistant director for the Office of News and Information, presented Knight News with a prepared statement, which said that signing the pledge was “another step in the university’s efforts to inform employees about the loan repayment plan for those working for qualifying employers.”
“UCF,” it continued, “has for some time taken action to work with employees and the Department of Education to share information and raise awareness about the program so employees can benefit. Signing the pledge is UCF’s latest commitment to the effort, and we will continue to prioritize keeping higher education affordable for all of our students and employees.”
The signed pledge, which is “subject to events that are not foreseen at this time,” says that UCF will expand awareness of the PSLF to its workers as well as students by distributing information about the program during “employee orientations and information events” and training human resources staff to address any concerns individuals may have. It also promises to maintain a record of employees who have filled out certification forms both to help workers keep track of their progress in completing the program as well as to share “in relevant benefits information sessions and in appropriate literature.”
This agreement, while similar to the pledge available on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau website, differs in its spirit. SLAP’s outreach director Nicole Hamm said that the difference is accountability.
“The only difference is that they’ve not pledged to the CFPB,” Hamm said. “They have encompassed everything in the CFPB pledge and even a little more as well — basically the same thing, just accountable to different people.”
Gilmartin could not confirm that information in time for publication, but said that she would reach out to Knight News once she had an answer. Should that be the case, UCF would be among the first universities to sign an agreement like this. Schools like Palomar College in San Diego and the University of Oregon were the first to be accountable to the CFPB.
Knight News was the only media outlet present at the meeting. Hamm said that after the disruption staged during President Hitt’s State of the University address, no reporters had even reached out to SLAP about its Debt-Free Future campaign. SLAP did not fall out of the brief limelight in the student press, however, before the Central Florida Future published an editorial by its content manager Caroline Glenn that criticized the campaign.
“She was obviously wrong and we made real change and we actually impacted the lives of employees on campus,” Hamm said. “She can say what she wants to. She did not talk to us, she didn’t understand our organizing and our campaigning and the way that we do it. We’re the ones who made real change.”
As for other criticism on social media, Hamm attributes that to misinformation and not paying attention to the campaign beyond the banner drop. Knight News, in its previous reporting about the agreement, provided a brief history of SLAP’s year-long effort.
A talking point in SLAP’s campaign was that implementing an agreement would not cost the university any money — the group even presented a phony check made out to President John Hitt for zero dollars to “pay” for it. However, Chavis and Daniels, the pledge’s two signatories, said that doing so would involve time, material and labor costs.
“This agreement was worth it anyway,” Daniels said.
Schell even returned the check to SLAP and joked that it might as well write “direct deposit” on it, to show that the check was “cashed.”
