The Sevan Blog

Jennifer Ogunsola is a woman of many goals. Her newest may be her most aspirational yet. With a giant student loan repayment total looming over her future, she’s decided that the reasons why it’s unrealistic are important enough for our president to know about. But don’t call what she’s doing a letter writing campaign, she doesn’t like that name. It’s more of a mission. There is no official name or label for it, but the passion and necessity behind it gives it a full voice.

A graduate of Temple University and the University of Baltimore, Jennifer has been honing her love for writing for many years. When she’s not freelancing, arranging PR details for Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, or crafting the latest day’s letter, she’s penning her first book.

Sevan: Tell me a little about what you’re doing.

Jennifer: So I have this issue with school loans, and it’s really troubling. I don’t make a lot of money, so I’ve been deferring and forbearing for as long as I can. And I’ve really got to start paying this, but my loan bills will be really crazy per month, so I’m like ‘I have to do something. I have good credit so I don’t want this to affect it. So what can I do? …Really, I should write President Obama.’ I was talking to one of my girlfriends at the end of November 2010 and decided I was going to do this as of January 1st, 2011. I’m going to write him every single day and I know he’s not opening letters, but his staff members are, and once they see these letters coming in every day, they’re going to be like ‘Who’s this Jennifer girl and why does she keep writing us?’ and actually read one. So January 1st, I was in Miami with my girlfriends for New Year’s and I started. I was on Ocean Drive writing my first letter to President Obama. Then I came back home the 2nd and I’ve been writing him every day. I label each letter at the top of the page.

I don’t write the same letter every day. I mail a letter off and the next day I write something off the top of my head, but I’m asking for the same thing: I need help with my school loans. I have to find creative ways to say that differently every time. When I first thought about it I thought I would just sit down and write a little pen pal letter to the President asking him for help. But the more I started writing, probably half way into week one, I realized if I was really serious about this, I was going to have to do some research and make some good, valid points.

For instance, the amount of money we put into the penal system compared to the education system. I had to do research on that, how much money it costs for somebody to go to jail for a year versus how much money different cities spend on children per year. It’s crazy. Children go to school or college for four or five years. Go to jail for five years, in that time you can get educated, you can get a degree, you eat for free, you sleep for free and the dorms look the same. I mean no one wants to go to jail, but when they come out, they have no debt. They don’t owe anybody any money. A lot of times, they’re better off than when they went. Whereas we’re paying for them to sleep, eat, etc. So I bring that up and a couple of other points. But basically, I just want him to help me in some way. People [ask me] ‘Do you think he’s going to pay them off?’ I don’t necessarily want him to; it would be great if he writes me back and says, ‘Forgiven!’ That would be awesome. But I just need some help. I feel like I’m being punished for going to college.

Sevan: Do you think you might go into next year if you don’t hear anything?

Jennifer: When he went into office he promised that they will respond to every letter. The response may not be what I want. His staff may respond and say, ‘Go here for more information,’ and I don’t want that, I want some help. I’m going to keep this up the whole year until I get a response. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s not just me. I have friends that are in this situation, too. That’s another thing that I focus on in my letters. I don’t know what’s going to come of it. But it’s better than not doing anything.

Sevan: Why the decision to write the different letters though? You could theoretically send the same letter.

Jennifer: That’s too easy! So let’s say someone does decide to do a story. [Or] let’s say I turned this letter writing “campaign” into a book. How boring would it be for me to have the same letters every day? The thing is I try to keep the letters very short. Working for the mayor, my co-workers and I draft citizen response letters and we don’t want to read pages of the same thing, so that’s what I try to do with each letter. I don’t want to try to put everything in one letter. He may read letter 20 and never see letter 10 or may read letter 400 and never see — well it won’t be 400 because hopefully by the end of the year he would have read, but he’s not going to see every letter. So I make some key points in each letter.

Sevan: What do you think the school loans are holding you back from?

Jennifer: Buying a home. Saving. Investing. My salary will increase [over time], but when it does I won’t have an excuse other than to pay my [loans back]. I’ve made maybe four payments on my school loans since I graduated undergrad in 2006. I’ve been deferring and forbearing because I could not afford the payment. They don’t care about you paying some of it. You’re still going to mess your credit up. You have to pay your [full] monthly bill. As opposed to paying $50 – $100 a month and messing my credit up, I just defer or forbear or whatever they allow me to do at the time. But it’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to face it. I was looking into buying a home recently and my debt-to-income ratio is extremely high because I have so many school loans. Based off of what I make, I can’t get much. So if I don’t want to live in an area that is not very safe, then I can’t buy a home. People always say school loan debt is a positive debt. I don’t see how it’s positive. It’s debt.

Sevan: You were just mentioning moving on from public service. What is it that you want to do?

Jennifer: I love to write. I love print journalism. I love magazines and newspapers and books. I keep and collect certain magazines. I just love to actually turn the pages and look at the photographs and read the articles. I don’t want to do that online. I’d love to be a magazine editor. I also love the entertainment industry. Hip-hop, I love that whole culture. Right now I do PR for Mayor Kasim Reed and I didn’t go to school for public relations. I kind of fell into that and once you know how to write, you can generally write whatever. One of my majors in undergrad was political science, so I will always love politics but I think after this job I will definitely get out of politics and if not a magazine editor, probably a publicist somewhere. I just have to be writing.

Sevan: Where does the love of writing come from?

Jennifer: I have journals from when I was in 3rd grade. And the crazy thing is when I went away to college I didn’t say I wanted to be a journalist, I always wanted to go to law school. But I think I started saying that when I was younger because it sounded good. So I went to school majoring in political science and then started thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this, I love writing.’ So I double majored instead of dropping political science; I added broadcast journalism. My second internship was with BET in 2004. I thought I wanted to be a TV host, still not thinking of the writing aspect of it. Towards the end of the internship, I asked the producer that I was working for if I could write a script for The Center. The producer told me, ‘Interns don’t write scripts.’ I’m like, ‘Well I just want to try, just give me an old script and let me see.’ She told me to have it the next day. I wrote two scripts that night. I probably had about an hour of sleep. I took them in to her and she was blown away. So I asked her if I could write two scripts and she told me, ‘You already wrote them, we’re going to actually do these shows.’

So I did those two shows and they aired. After that I thought, ‘Writing can be very rewarding! I could actually do this.’ The senior show writer told me to write for the school newspaper, write whatever you can. That’s exactly what I did. As soon as that summer was over and I went back to school, I started writing in every issue of The Temple News and then I got an internship my senior year with Trace magazine in New York. I had class two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I caught the Greyhound from Philly to New York. I was at work in New York by 10 a.m. and I left at 5 or 6 p.m. like everybody else and caught the bus back to Philly. I did that for about four or five months. I wrote and I got published. That was the first time I was published in a national magazine. I’ve been writing every since.

Sevan: Who else have you written for?

Jennifer: Black Enterprise magazine, I’m actually in their February 2011 issue. Upscale magazine, The Root. I’ve written a few other things for BET. I didn’t write for PBS, but I’ve been featured and quoted a few times for stories that I’ve done.

I’m working on a book right now. It started [as] part of my graduate school thesis and it was right when the presidential election was happening back in 2008 with Obama, and I noticed his connection with hip-hop. I’ve never really seen hip-hop culture connect with politicians or politics in my lifetime, so I started doing some research. When I saw Young Jeezy and T.I. — and not even just surface stuff, if you do some real research you’ll see them at rallies talking to kids about the importance of voting — I was like, ‘Is this the same Young Jeezy and T.I. talking?’ So I just started researching more and [then realized], ‘I could turn this into a book! I’ve always wanted to write a book and this could be my opportunity.’ So I started working on it, but I wanted a co-author. I thought it would be easier and just better if I had another writer to write this with. I started off with one and that didn’t work out, so I asked someone else, an established journalist, but his schedule was too busy. [I took that as] a sign that I needed to write this myself.

Jennifer: The book is non-fiction, but I wanted to incorporate interviews with hip-hop heads and politicians to talk about the connection between Barack Obama and hip-hop. I started writing interview request letters, and I don’t know if I didn’t think that people would agree to it, but I started getting big interviews: Hill Harper, Kevin Liles, Mo’Nique, DJ Drama, Dr. Cornell West. They were really excited about the project, which motivated me to work on it more. Right now I’m trying to get an agent. Something a lot of people say if you’re writing, especially non-fiction, is to build your platform, so I’m trying to do articles around the subject so I can already say I’m an authority. In November I did an article on the midterm elections and right now I’m working on another pitch. The Democrats just announced where the DNC is going to be this year and they’re starting to gear up for [Obama's] campaign and he’s already announced that he’s bringing Jay-Z and some other rappers in, so I’m trying to get some articles out of it so I can really push this. I really believe in this project and I have all these great interviews, 16 so far. My issue, though, is rappers. I can’t do the book without hip-hop. That’s what I’m really working on right now.

Sevan: So how do you go about approaching these people?

Jennifer: Sending interview request letters. Find out who the publicists are, who represents them, who are their assistants, the best person to send a letter to. Sometimes I’ll get, ‘Do you already have deal, who’s publishing it?’ and I don’t, so they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re not doing it.’ They don’t say it, but they don’t respond back, so I just keep on pushing.

Be sure to check out Jennifer’s blog and website. If you’re wondering how you can help the mission, Jennifer is readily accepting stamp fund donations. Every little bit helps. Tweet her for the details.

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