Students suffocate under tens of thousands in loans

By Sandra Block, USA TODAY

Tom Dillon, 19, a pre-pharmacy major at the University of Connecticut, is carrying $52,000 in student loans. And he's just getting started. When he gets his pharmacy doctorate in four years, he expects his debt to exceed $150,000. Dillon's been drawn to pharmacy since age 5, when he found out he had epilepsy.

"The first person who helped me was my pharmacist," he says. Dillon, who no longer has epilepsy, would like to go into pharmaceutical research. But he knows he'd earn more money as a pharmacist for one of the big drugstore chains.

"When I get out, I'm going to have that $150,000 weighing over me," he says. "What I decide is going to be dependent on that debt."

Continued here...

From Bloomberg news: Michigan Teenage Mayor, U.S.'s Youngest, Attends Meetings, Prom

Sessions, a write-in candidate who defeated 51-year-old incumbent Doug Ingles by two votes to lead the city of 8,233, is trying to prove wrong critics who said it was a mistake to elect a teenager who has never held a full-time job. He's trying to fulfill a promise to make City Hall more responsive while luring employers to a community 98 miles (158 kilometers) southwest of Detroit that has been hit by plant closings.

What’s new at Rock the Vote?

As a major national organization with real force in American culture, Rock the Vote attracts a lot of attention. That's our power, its why we are so successful.

So, now that the New Year is underway, you might be interested to know what we have planned for 2006, where we are in the aftermath of 2004, etc.

First of all, looking back: It was clear to us late in the 2004 cycle that we were having an incredible impact. By late August more than one million young people had already registered to vote through our website. We saw the signs of an historic increase in turnout in the making. So we let it all hang out and decided to play catch-up later. We're enormously proud of the fact that nearly 5 million more young people voted in 2004 than in 2000 and we're honored to have played a part in making that happen.

But it wasn't cheap, and like a lot of political organizations, we had to spend more than we could raise in the 2004 presidential cycle. That left us with a modest debt to carry forward. Its nothing new for us, and its worth noting that while we're gearing up for the future, many groups that did voter work in 2004 have closed doors.

This year, we’re taking advantage of the off-cycle to restructure and lay big plans for the future of the organization. A big emphasis for 2006 is going to be taking our online voter registration campaign, which generated 1.2 million voter registrations in 2004, to the next level.

2006-2008 is going to be bigger than ever. So keep watching... and keep talking.