By Jacqueline Lee
Managing Editor of News
This past weekend, Washington University in St. Louis served as the backdrop for the second presidential debate. Due to this high profile event, CNN correspondents were broadcasting live from the campus. College freshman, and member of Newton South’s Class of 2016, Albert Wu, took advantage of this opportunity and held up a sign that read “Student Debt Sucks” along with his Venmo username. Venmo is an app that allows users to lend and borrow money from each other. Wu has since raised hundreds of dollars and has caught the attention of media outlets, including CNN, Teen Vogue, and NY Mag. He is now trying to get on The Ellen Degeneres Show. Denebola had the opportunity to ask a few questions regarding his overnight fame:
Why did you decide to make and hold up that sign during the CNN Broadcast?
It actually kinda happened by chance. I had won a WashU poster at a carnival game and I had a Sharpie, so I said ‘Heck, why not just make my own poster to hold in front of the broadcasters’. So I thought ‘what’s an issue that affects me and affects a lot of the people around me and a bunch of young voters’, and I immediately thought of student debt; that is something we are all dealing with. I just wanted to make a funny poster, so I wrote ‘Student Debt Sucks Venmo @albertwu97’. It’s kinda a silly, funny sign, but has a pretty good meaning because it is an issue. And it has kinda blown up, there have been six or seven articles written about me and my sign, ranging from CNN to Teen Vogue. It has basically started a conversation about this issue in our nation, which I am so stoked about, because my sign has just opened up a whole new discussion on rising student debt and how that basically is crippling the youth of our nation. As students are making their choices on which college to go to, [finances] are a huge factor. Paying upwards of $70,000 a year to go to these institutions doesn’t seem like a sustainable system in the long run. The price of college has increased tremendously from what it was twenty, thirty years ago and it is definitely an issue that has to be addressed. I was hoping that it would be addressed at the presidential debate. Since this debate is being hosted at a college, hosted by students on a college campus, it would make sense for them to do that, but they didn’t, so I hope they do in the future because it is an issue that affects the younger voters, which make up a lot of the vote going forward.
What kind of policies would you like to see the future president enact to help resolve this issue?
With Bernie Sanders, a huge part of his platform was making [public] colleges in America free of tuition, which is a pretty drastic or different approach to the issue, but it did inspire a lot of young voters. What I would like to see are steps toward making college more affordable, this is something that can’t keep going in the direction that it is going. You can probably look up a ton of statistics on how it is increasing every year; there are no caps on it. In terms of a policy I would like to see, I would want a reallocation of revenue coming from state taxes and putting that more towards education as opposed to the military or other things we are spending so much money on and maybe enable more people to go to college by making the price tag of these colleges cheaper.
Is there anything at Washington University in St. Louis that makes the environment especially conducive to student activism and advocacy?
For sure. The biggest thing I have noticed, that I have come to appreciate at WashU, is how diverse the student body is. WashU is right in the middle of the country so you have people from the East Coast, West Coast, North and South all coming here. It’s not like a California state school where a majority are from a certain region. WashU is also one of the leaders for international students as well, so you are getting a very wide range of students with a very wide range of opinions, cultures, ethnicities. It’s kind of a hub for thought, a hub for discussion. Just two weeks ago, there was a Black Lives Matter protest on campus; there were many student organizations organizing a march against hate for this election. There are so many different organizations at WashU and it is definitely something that has contributed to the openness on campus and the appreciation for discussion because we have so many different types of people coming to this institution. It’s quite remarkable. I won’t say that this is exclusive to WashU, it definitely occurs at other college campuses, but there are many factors at play at WashU that make it a great environment.
What was your initial response to all of the media coverage you were receiving?
So this basically occurred over two days. So on Saturday, they were doing broadcasts leading up to the debate, and that is when I was outside with CNN. So I was out there in front of the broadcasters, occasionally getting on TV and holding my poster, but I was honestly more concerned with calling my mom telling her ‘Mom, Dad, I am on TV in the corner holding a silly sign’. And they were like ‘Yeah, you are being so silly Albert’. While I was there, I got a message from The Thrillist, which is an online media source. I didn’t know what The Thrillist was, it seemed like a small thing; I honestly thought it was one of WashU’s newspapers, but it turns out that it is a national media coverage thing. So I wasn’t too blown away, but I answered [the writer’s] questions. The next day I was outside MSNBC doing the same thing just waving the poster and having a good time with everyone. Being on live television again, people started to notice more. I got a Twitter DM from New York Mag, and I was like ‘wow, that is a legit thing’, so i was pretty stoked. And then I got an email from Jezebel. And then I got a phone call from CNN, and that’s when I was like ‘woah, CNN wants to reach out to me’ and I was honestly in shock, like you don’t expect these things to happen. They said ‘Hey Albert. We would love to write a story about you, come find us. We would love to have you on the live stream’. I was blown away and was honestly so astounded by that. I mean here I am thinking I am just making a silly poster and having a good time and then one of the biggest news sources in America is reaching out to me personally. Afterwards, more and more news sources started reaching out to me. And then I remember waking up the next day and Teen Vogue had written an article, they didn’t even reach out to me, they just wrote an article on me, like I don’t even know how they got the quotes. It was definitely very surprising and didn’t seem like real life. Even now when I read the articles people have been sharing on Facebook, it doesn’t seem real. I have had friends come up to me and say ‘my friends at University of Texas are talking about you’ or I will be walking around campus and people will come up to me and ask ‘hey, are you the venmo guy?’ I guess I kinda went viral. If you told me that this would happen a week ago, I would have said that you are crazy and that can’t happen.
What do you really plan to do with the donations you have been receiving?
That is the million dollar question. So in total I have raised $700 in individual donations, all of them coming with really funny messages. But two nights ago, a WashU alum gave me an individual donation of $100, which is way more than anything I have received so far, but in her comment she said ‘promise me that you will use this towards your student loans’ and as soon as I read that I sent the money right back. Although it is a decent amount of cash, it definitely will not put a dent into my student tuition. I might keep it as an emergency fund for the essentials that every college student needs, just to have it as a cushion if anything happens. I mean it’s always good to have emergency funds. I can’t list any particular uses for the money, but I definitely won’t blow it away on random stuff. I will keep it just in case I am ever starving and need to get that slice of pizza or that hamburger. I appreciate the money a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, in terms of my entire student tuition, it will help, but it won’t make a large dent in it. The money doesn’t seem real since it’s not like someone handed me seven hundred dollars, it’s all on Venmo.
You can help Albert get on The Ellen Degeneres Show:
