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An alleged hazing incident at a Texas high school that sent one football player to the hospital with burn injuries has resulted in 21 students being suspended.
The Alamo Heights Police Department is investigating after 21 students were suspended at Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio, Texas stemming from a hazing incident that sent one student to the emergency room with skin burns to his lower body, KENS-TV reported this week.
The football players were reportedly initiating new players onto the varsity team as part of a school tradition that involved hot sauce, cookies, and lap dances.
"The senior boys did an initiation, where they went out to the baseball fields and made the younger players put cookies dipped in hot sauce between their butt cheeks," a source told KENS-TV. "Then, they had to race each other, and if any of the cookies fell out the person would have to eat it. They made them do this in an open space completely naked."
BOY, 5, DIES AFTER BEING LEFT IN HOT CAR OUTSIDE TEXAS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DURING TRIPLE-DIGIT TEMPERATURES
Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio, Texas
(Google Maps)
The source added that some players had hot sauce thrown at them and that some of the freshman were forced to strip down to their boxers and give lap dances to cheerleaders at the party.
"Last week, the District received multiple messages through our anonymous tip line regarding safety concerns and allegations of misconduct by some players on the football team," Alamo Heights ISD director of communications Julie Ann Matonis said in a statement. "The alleged incident did not take place on AHISD property nor was it during school hours. District administrators and coaches had no knowledge of any allegations prior to receiving the reports. The District immediately investigated the matter thoroughly and took appropriate action. Because of student confidentiality laws, the District is prohibited from sharing any additional information."
BEDRIDDEN TEXAS MOTHER FOUND IN ‘DEPLORABLE’ HEALTH, OPEN BED SORES AND MOLD ON BODY; ADULT CHILDREN ARRESTED
Local sports talk radio host Mike Taylor said on Wednesday that "almost the entire" team was punished for the incident receiving two game suspensions, in-house suspensions, and community service.
According to KENS-TV, some victims of the hazing incident will also be suspended.
"Nobody would ever want this to happen to their child," Kara Van De Kieft, a parent of junior high students in the district, told the outlet. "It is something that is a concern to me as a parent of somebody who will be going to the high school next year."
The Alamo Heights Independent School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Ahead of another deadline on the restart of payments for America's $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a plan to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on repayments -- a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
Speaking from the White House's Roosevelt Room, Biden outlined his plan to forgive tens of thousands of dollars for individuals earning less than $125,000 a year.
"An entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for an attempt at least at a college degree," Biden said. "The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate, you may not have access to the middle class life that the college degree once provided."
"The pandemic only made things worse," he continued, noting that many people can't afford to buy homes or are putting off starting a family in part because of their student loan debt.
President Joe Biden holds a press conference regarding Student Loans at the White House in Washington, Aug. 24, 2022.ABC News
People who took out Pell Grants to pay for college, which are grants given to low-income borrowers, can qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday's broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don't have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000,
Both forgiveness options are for people who earned less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household, in either the 2020 or 2021 tax year.
"If all borrowers claim the relief that they're entitled to, 43 million federal student loan borrowers will benefit, and of those, 20 million will have their debt completely canceled," a senior administration official said on a call with reporters on Wednesday, detailing the plan.
According to the White House, 60% of borrowers have Pell Grants, meaning the majority of borrowers are eligible for the larger forgiveness. And because people are only eligible for Pell Grants if they can show that their family can only contribute a certain amount per year toward college, the Biden administration says narrowing in on relief for these recipients will help target people with the highest economic need.
Biden on Wednesday also announced an extension of the pause on student loan payments through Dec. 31, 2022 -- the final extension -- a move that's intended to give time for the transition back to repayment.
Biden unveiled the first details of the so-called "Student Debt Relief Plan" earlier Wednesday through a fact-sheet posted to Twitter.
"In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023," Biden wrote in the post.
Amid questions about how the plan will be paid for, Biden said Wednesday there's "plenty of deficit reduction" to pay for the proposals.
"I will never apologize for helping working people and middle-class Americans," he said.
Activists attend a rally outside of the White House to call on U.S. President Joe Biden to cancel student debt in Washington, July 27, 2022.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it's clear: The move would be well within the president's authority -- it just hasn't been wielded before because of the political implications.
"The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act," said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
"A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is," Brooks said. "Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has."
Still, Biden could get taken to court -- possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn't been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced -- and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
"The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes," Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
"If the rumors are true, we've got a problem. And tragically, we've experienced this so many times before," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement before they were announced.
"President Biden's decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people - especially Black women - behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020," Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt -- particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly -- Biden's policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, speaking before Biden's announcement, his move comes just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he's concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
"I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher," Fuller told ABC News. "I mean for January and February -- the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months."
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller's remaining student loan bills, he said.
"It's about two-thirds of the debt that I have left," he said.
That would make payments "a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation," he said.
Easing the student debt crisis -- which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 -- could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, Aug. 9, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters, FILE
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates have argued that canceling some student loans would begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
"I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans," Mason told ABC News. "The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women."
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason's program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor's degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said "they will not have to worry about student loan debt," which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education. "My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000," Mason said.
For the nation's borrowers most affected, Mason said, "there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families."
ABC News' Mariam Khan and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
US federal student debt tops $1.6 trillion, counting over 43 million Americans who have federal student debt, more than half of whom owe less than $20,000.
Biden's plan would likely eliminate student debt entirely for millions of Americans and wipe away at least half for millions more.
(Evan Vucci / AP)
US President Joe Biden is set to announce his long-delayed move to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for many Americans and extend a pause on payments to January, according to three people familiar with the plan.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Biden's intended Wednesday announcement ahead of time.
The precise details of Biden's plan, which will include an income cap limiting the forgiveness to only those earning less than $125,000 a year, were being kept to an unusually small circle within the Biden administration and were still not finalised on the eve of the announcement.
Down-to-the-wire decision-making has been a hallmark of the Biden White House but the particular delay on student loans reflects the vexing challenge confronting him in fulfilling a key campaign promise.
The plan would likely eliminate student debt entirely for millions of Americans and wipe away at least half for millions more.
Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief to hard-hit borrowers, and from moderates and Republicans questioning the fairness of any widespread forgiveness.
The delay in Biden's decision has only heightened the anticipation for what his own aides acknowledge represents a political no-win situation.
US President Biden has suggested cancelling debts of $10,000 per borrower, while facing pressure from some Democrats, including some of his closest aides, to increase this figure to $50,000.
How much student debt is there in the US? We take a look 👇— TRT World (@trtworld) May 23, 2022
Ballooning federal student debt
The nation’s federal student debt now tops $1.6 trillion after ballooning for years.
More than 43 million Americans have federal student debt, with almost a third owing less than $10,000 and more than half owing less than $20,000, according to the latest federal data.
The continuation of the pandemic-era payment freeze comes just days before millions of Americans were set to find out when their next student loan bills will be due. This is the closest the administration has come to hitting the end of the payment freeze extension, with the current pause set to end on August 31.
Wednesday’s announcement has been set for the White House after Biden returns from vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Biden was initially skeptical of student loan debt cancellation as he faced off against more progressive Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who had proposed cancellations of $50,000 or more, during the 2020 primaries.
As he tried to shore up support among younger voters and prepare for a general election battle against then-president Donald Trump, Biden unveiled his initial proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap.
Last minute push for bigger debt relief
But Democrats, from members of congressional leadership to those facing tough re-election bids this November, have pushed the administration to go as broad as possible on debt relief, seeing it in part as a galvanising issue, particularly for Black and young voters this fall.
Although Biden’s plan is narrower than what he initially proposed, Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, described student debt as a “gateway issue” for younger voters, meaning it affects their views and decisions on housing affordability and career choices.
However, John Della Volpe, who worked as a consultant on Biden’s campaign, said the decision was more about "trust in politics, in government, in our system ...”
Republicans, meanwhile, see only political upside if Biden pursues a large-scale cancellation of student debt ahead of the November midterms, anticipating backlash for Democrats — particularly in states where there are large numbers of working-class voters without college degrees.
Critics of broad student debt forgiveness also believe it will open the White House to lawsuits, on the grounds that Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt on his own.
Source: AP
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FOR 29th August 2022
