Oregon students, educators, and community members testified in overwhelming support of Oregon’s Pay It Forward proposal (House Bill 2662) on Friday, March 6 2015 – testimony begins at 1:22:06; click here for video with annotated list of speakers:

Lamar Wise and other Pay It Forward supporters had a pointed question for members of Oregon’s House Committee on Higher Education, Innovation, and Workforce Development during a hearing on House Bill 2662 (implementing Oregon’s proposed Pay It Forward pilot):

“What more do you want from students who do the right thing but still come up short?”

Speaking on behalf of himself and other students at his high school, Max Neel, a sophomore at Rex Putnam High School in Milwaukie, Ore., laid out the need for Pay It Forward clearly to the committee, saying:

“We don’t just want it. We need it. If Oregon has no plans to start helping its younger people pursue a degree, as it has in the past, then it should at least give us the means to take on the responsibility in a reasonable manner, not by dumping a bunch of debt on our families and burying our future in loans that we’ll probably just end up unable to pay anyway. The Pay It Forward pilot is that sort of plan. …It’s time that the government of this state start taking its future, me and my fellow students, as seriously as it’s always claimed to.”

Support for HB 2662 was overwhelming, from students and educators to community members and finance experts. Groups testifying in favor included:

• Oregon Student Association
• The Main Street Alliance of Oregon
• Family Forward Oregon
• PCUN, (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United)
• Urban League of Portland
• Rural Organizing Project
• The Bus Project
• American Association of University Professors, Portland State University
• Oregon Working Families Organization
• UFCW Local 555
• Innovative Changes
• Jubilee Oregon

Check out all of the testimony on HB 2662 here!