In May of 2021, I graduated with a Master of Arts from NYU and I am now $94,000 in debt. This performance is meant to address the absurdity of the high cost of education in relation to low/stagnant wages in the United States of America. The cost does not just refer to the price tag associated with a given degree. I am talking about the cost of emotional, physical, and mental labor to complete a degree. I am talking about the shame and guilt that society places on students who pursue costly education while simultaneously being told they are responsible for the debt incurred no matter what. What are the majority of Americans supposed to do to get a higher-paying job? According to the US Department of Labor, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. When I am talking about my debt I am also talking about student debt as a whole because I know I am not alone. In 2021 the Federal Reserve estimated that borrowers owed a collective $1.73 trillion dollars in student loan debt.

For this performance, I dressed in a two-piece suit, white shirt, black rubber gloves, black leather boots, a Halloween skeleton mask, and my NYU cap and tassel (that I had received in the mail). I carried a simple cardboard sign that read CANCEL STUDENT DEBT on one side and LIVING WAGES NOW! on the other. On NYU’s designated graduation day I stood outside my college’s building on the NYU campus and proceeded to walk to Washington Square Park. Our in-person graduation had been canceled due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic but I hoped there would be other students around outside. As I walked I held my sign and stopped along the way occasionally. Once I got to Washington Square Park there were many other NYU students taking photos in their caps and gowns. I walked past a bench of construction workers eating lunch. One of them saw my sign and yelled, “Go to trade school!” and the rest laughed. A fellow NYU graduate asked me if we could take a picture together. I sat on a ledge around the fountain at the center of the park. I would later find out that a photographer took a photo of me and they had licensed that image to Getty Images for profit. After that, I walked off of campus and the performance was over.