Settled in behind the hustle and bustle of the popular 12:05 p.m. lunch rush in IC Square is junior Lauren Flasher, with her chair pulled up next to boyfriend Matt DiAnthony as the television-radio major refuels during her only one-hour break between classes.

It’s a precious time slot in her otherwise non-stop Wednesday schedule that lasts from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. She’s only a quarter of the way through her day, but tonight will be a good night. 10 p.m. is an early exit time for her, as she usually waitresses until close at Chili’s Bar and Grill.

Two elements dictate Flasher’s busy lifestyle: her schoolwork, in a major she feels passionately about, and her job, that she’s forced to do to stay in school.

The juggling act she performs four to five times per week is an effort to pay, single-handedly, for her education at Ithaca College. Right now, she’s looking at $60,000 in loans, and that’s not yet including her senior year.

Her agenda is guided by a $400-a-week goal. Monthly, she needs to bring in at least $1,000 before living expenses and savings to pay bills.

President Tom Rochon said he anticipates that students and their families will begin to have a harder time paying for college in today’s economy. He and Provost Kathleen Rountree said in an Intercom announcement that the college will take “aggressive action” to increase enrollment and thereby create more revenue from tuition. The college will also look for places in the operating budget to cut and provide more funding for financial aid. To ease student’s concerns, Rochon approached the topic again last night, at a Strategic Visioning Plan listening session.

Earlier in the semester, she chipped a miniscule amount off the debt pile by combining her labor and love. Current TV purchased her documentary, “Why Financial Aid Doesn’t Work”, for $200. It featured herself as an example of the struggles of a student financially supporting herself through college at the expense of what she believes is a defective aid system in the United States.

The station thought Flasher’s segment was an interesting perspective — “a young person struggling to make ends meet within a broken financial system,” Sarah Evershed, the associate producer of collective journalism at Current TV, said.

The five-minute segment aired Nov. 3 as a part of Current TV’s special, “The Broke Generation.” The network picked up on Flasher’s pitch earlier this fall as the result of a collaboration with her nonfiction production class set up by John Scott, an assistant professor of television and radio.

The relationship enables a creative executive from Current TV to choose and use student-produced documentaries while giving those students a chance to get their piece on a national broadcast.

Scott said because Flasher applied her real-life experience to her documentary she made a “real form of social engagement that has roots in old-fashioned ideas about what being a citizen is all about.”

Flasher insists — in her documentary and in casual conversation — that her college is not at fault. Instead, she blames the gap formed by “federal formulas” that restrict colleges from understanding a student’s whole financial picture that would otherwise allow them to grant more aid.

“What [colleges] look at for financial aid needs to change,” Flasher said. “Loan companies look at debt and credit but the financial aid office doesn’t.”

In Flasher’s case, her FAFSA data does not reveal the reality of her family’s financial situation. Her parents’ high income suggests to the financial aid office that they should be able to contribute more than they actually can.

“They don’t look at how far in debt [my father] is or how bad his credit is, or the fact that he can’t co-sign for a loan,” Flasher said.

An estimated 80 percent of students at the  college receive financial aid, according to Larry Chambers, director of student financial services at the college. He also said the system is far from perfect.

“The current tools to assess a family’s need for federal aid [are] flawed,” he said.

The dead-end road denies students like Flasher sufficient help from both leading parties in aid. First, they are denied by the financial aid office because of “congressional methodology” as Chambers said in Flasher’s documentary. Then loan companies turn them away because of strict lender requirements.

Chambers said Flasher’s documentary has value in demonstrating these challenges students face. It also points out “where the shortcomings are in federal aid programs that have not kept pace with the cost of higher education,” Chambers said.

The severity of the issue that has been affecting students for years resonates with Flasher today.

“Something needs to be done to get rid of that contradiction,” she said.

For Flasher, times have been even tougher — like last spring, when her position as a student was jeopardized after the backbone of financial support that was her parent’s income, crumbled to nothing.

Her parents were already in debt last year when they moved from Limerick, Pa., to outside Bangor, Maine. The economic state of the real estate market made the first house impossible to sell and with two mortgages, their debt quickly soared.

Flasher went through eight loan companies before she found one that was willing to help. In the lapsed time, she was forced to work enough hours at Chili’s to pay the first two months of tuition completely out of her pocket.

Of course, transferring to a more affordable school was an option, but one Flasher was never willing to make. Even today, she considers the financial risk to be heavily outweighed by the benefits of graduating with what she considers to be a valued degree from the college with opportunities from an established communications program.

Reluctantly, Flasher said if she had the time she would be doing more to boost her résumé through extracurricular activities like ICTV. As she works to pay off seven different loans, Flasher doesn’t consider this an option. Her free time is the time she spends with her head to the pillow — and it’s beginning to affect her friendships.

“They are growing apart from Lauren,” DiAnthony said, sitting by Flasher’s side. “They still love her, but she’s never around.”

Flasher’s documentary suggests a solution by cutting military spending and redirecting the funds to higher education. The National Conversation Initiative, a campaign run by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, are aiming to combat the issue by collaborating with a new presidential administration and improve financial aid in higher education through a fluctuating economy.

Chambers was on the NASFAA Board of Directors when Phillip Day, the president of NASFAA, first approached the group to approve the initiative.

“The hope is to understand how we might improve … rising financial barriers facing students and parents, challenges that exist in delivery of student aid, a lack of a coherent framework for reforming financial aid,” he said.

Through all of the hurdles, Flasher has yet to face the biggest obstacle: post-graduation payback. Her professors warn her of the woes they hear from recent graduates about the difficult job market they’re entering. Flasher will likely have to get a second job waitressing to supplement her income, she said.

As Flasher considers the task of balancing two jobs instead of one job, five classes and homework, she said ironically, entering the real world seems like it would be a relief.