Clinton at UWM: Hillary Clinton Criticizes Student Loan Debt, Walker, and Trump

Milwaukee—Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton came out hard against the current state of college tuition in a speech given in the Wisconsin Room of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union on Thursday.

The Former Secretary of State deplored the debt that students incur while getting their college degrees. Clinton encouraged those in attendance to raise their hands if they had student debt. Over three-fourths of the crowd raised their hands as cheers were heard throughout the room.

“You can refinance your home, you can refinance your car, but you can’t refinance your student debt. That is wrong,” said Clinton.

Clinton not only wants students to be able to refinance their student debt, but she also promised to make going to a four-year university without debt a possibility if elected president. Clinton also called for an end to interest on student loans.

Clinton’s views on tuition were especially interesting to Brian Ellenbecker, a senior finance major at UWM. “College is a big thing for me, so the whole tuition thing is important to hear about,” said Ellenbecker.

In her speech, which comes on the heels of polling drops over the past month, Clinton found time to bring up Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Donald Trump, Republican presidential hopefuls, to a chorus of boos from the crowd. She said that Gov. Walker is not in tune with women’s needs, while saying that Trump has made the Republican Party less respectable.

“When women are short changed, entire families are short changed, and Wisconsin and America is short changed,” said Clinton.

Gov. Walker was quick to respond to Clinton in an email his campaign sent to Media Milwaukee.

“To move our country forward like we moved Wisconsin forward, we need a fresh face from outside Washington, D.C., to wreak havoc on the status quo and put hard-working American taxpayers back in charge,” said the Walker statement. “Hillary Clinton, who has been fighting for the ruling class over the working class for years, is not fit to take up that mantle.”

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was in attendance, as well as Wisconsin State Sen. Lena Taylor.

Both Barrett and Taylor gave speeches in support of women’s rights, setting the theme for the entire evening. The grass roots event was entitled “Woman for Hillary.”

When bringing up the topic of widespread gun violence in America, Clinton said that her heart breaks for the family of Dontre Hamilton, the Milwaukee man who was shot to death by a Milwaukee police officer in April of 2014.

Clinton came to Milwaukee as reports were beginning to gain steam of her declining popularity in key states.

Her popularity in Wisconsin has dropped from a high of 58 percent of the voters to 38 percent last month, according to polling done by Marquette Law School. However, the poll showed she still leads Republican candidates in head-to-head matchups in Wisconsin.

Professor Kathleen Dolan, professor and chair in the Political Science Department at UWM, feels that it is too early for Clinton to be panicking.

“It’s a long slog [the presidential primary], said Dolan. “Where you are at the beginning is not where you normally wind up.”

Some of Clinton’s decline in popularity can be attributed to the emergence of a former unknown, Bernie Sanders.

Sanders is like a “shiny, new toy” according to Dolan. It will take some time for voters to find out what exactly he stands for and if they would actually vote for him.

The event was originally scheduled to occur in the Spaights Plaza but was moved indoors to the Wisconsin Room of the UWM Union because of the threat of rain.

Even with the change in venue, the crowd of several hundred was in a jovial mood all evening, dancing to Pharrell’s song “Happy” before the event began and cheering loudly in support of any democrat to walk across the stage.

Besides the curtain backdrop falling down before the event began and a couple of protesters attempting to cut off Clinton’s speech with chants of “no more deportation,” the event went off without a hitch.

The majority of the crowd walked away with a smile on their faces. That included Ross Taggert, a self-described Republican and a senior at UWM from Sheboygan.

“I’m actually more of an independent Republican,” said Taggert. “But what she said about Donald Trump was 100 percent accurate.”