“For two weeks, at grocery stores, nursing homes, and soccer games, employees of Sallie Mae’s loan-service and data center in Fishers [Indiana] had tried to persuade their neighbors to join them in signing a petition urging Congress to consider alternatives to the Obama administration’s plan to end bank-based student lending,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. “The company official, Jon Kroehler, a senior vice president, told the crowd that one employee had handed around the petition in a hospital delivery room as his wife was giving birth. As he finished reciting a few last facts about the company’s Fishers location (its $148-million payroll has the economic impact of 7,000 local jobs, he said), about 20 employees ran out from behind him, clapping and grinning and carrying stacks of petitions. Above, a banner dropped to reveal the total number of signatures: 81,437, greater than the population of Fishers.”