Mallory Heiney attended the now-defunct Everest Institute, a formerly for-profit university that was under the umbrella of Corinthian Colleges. Corinthian has had a long and steady history in recent years dealing with lawsuits over alleged wrongdoing, which led to an agreement in 2014 with the Department of Education to sell 85 of its colleges and close an extra 12.
Fifteen former Corinthian students--including Heiney--have banded together to fight what they say were predatory lending, and are refusing to pay back their student debt.
But, in describing her plight, Heiney took the comparison deeper than you'd imagine, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that this fight is channeling the civil rights struggle 60-years earlier.
"While our cause is modest by comparison, we recognize that some of the greatest human rights movements in history were launched by the small acts of a few individuals," Heiney writes. "In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. This soon led to the revolutionary Montgomery bus boycott."
There's one small difference between student loan debt and Rosa Parks' act though: Parks was arrested. Parks risked everything. She received death threats for nearly the rest of her life.
Lenders might be predatory, but they aren't going to threaten to kill you. At least not yet.
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