Oliver still says her education, which has left her more than $100,000 in debt, was worth every penny.
It took a long time for Kelli Oliver to come to terms with her decision to enroll at Ohio University.
Her frustration wasn’t that she made the wrong call, even though she had plenty of other options, some as far away as Chicago.
It was the guilt. The guilt that often comes with how it feels to owe more than $100,000 that might take 50 years to pay off.
“There’s a lot of guilt that goes with that, like, ‘You shouldn’t have taken out those loans if you couldn’t afford college,’ ” she said. “And eventually I was like, ‘Well, yeah, that’s bullshit.’ I just wanted to go to college. I wanted to do what everyone else was doing, or so I thought.”
Once she came to that realization, Oliver, now a senior studying commercial photography and Student Senate’s minority affairs senator, said it was an easy step to mobilize with other like-minded student activists to combat rising costs of higher education.
“It’s in my favor to be fighting against that,” she said.
Working off her student debt, however, will be anything but simple. Once she graduates, Oliver estimates that she will have more than $100,000 in loans that need to be paid off. Her parents have only been able to contribute toward paying off roughly 10 percent of that, she said, which she’s lucky to get.
Oliver said she will also be fortunate to graduate from OU’s School of Visual Communication with tangible skills that can get her freelance work taking photos — something that hasn’t always been the case for her older friends who were in other majors.
Some are so crippled with debt that they can’t even open up bank accounts or buy cars, she said.
Oliver’s sister, Hayley, who is a freshman studying women's, gender and sexuality studies and political science, still fears her sister might have a similar fate.
“We’re a small family, so any financial impact affects all of us,” Hayley said. “Honestly, it’s terrifying for her, the next 30 to 50 years, struggling to make payments for something she did for four years.”
But the two sisters are resolute that higher education remains a worthy investment.
Hayley said her older sister always had a passion for social and economic justice while growing up in Pickerington, but her experiences in and out of the classroom at OU have left her more vocal than ever before.
“School has definitely changed her outspokenness,” Hayley said. “Every time we go home for a family event Kelli is educating everyone.”
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Oliver said OU’s classes, like African American studies’ History of Injustice in the United States, and guest speakers, such as Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, helped transform her from a high school senior who “didn’t understand the gravity” of college affordability to the leader of campus activism she is now.
It’s an awkward dynamic, she admits, that it took tens of thousands of dollars to reach enlightenment.
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But it strengthens her belief, especially as an African-American woman, that anyone from any background should be able to have the same experience without all the financial burdens.
“It’s extremely backward because I wouldn’t have gotten to this point of liberation or understanding of all these concepts if I hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t come to the university,” she said. “(It) is sad because there are people who don’t even understand how they’re being oppressed … because they can’t ever get to college where people talk about these things.”
@SamuelHHoward
sh335311@ohio.edu
