On Tuesday, government officials will meet with a group of students who went on a “debt strike” in February, refusing to pay student loans they incurred while studying at schools owned by a troubled for-profit education company.

Representatives from the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will address demands for loan forgiveness from the students, who studied at Corinthian Colleges, a network of schools that is winding down operations amid a multi-state investigation into its questionable education and lending practices.

The meeting is the latest development in an escalating battle waged by U.S. senators and activists to convince the government to cancel federal student debt that students took on to attend Corinthian, which agreed to close or sell all its schools in July. In February, Corinthian sold many of its U.S. campuses to ECMC group, which has been acting as a debt collector for federal student loans. Now the 100 debt strikers hope the government can help them execute a legal strategy that will bring them relief.

“We need [U.S. Education Secretary] Arne Duncan to address his legacy. He has presided over this transfer of this failing for-profit college to a debt collector and has left students holding the bag,” says Ann Larson, an organizer with the Debt Collective, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot group that is helping to organize the strike. Denise Horn, an Education Department spokeswoman, says Duncan is out of the country, but confirms that Undersecretary Ted Mitchell, among other senior officials, will be at the meeting.

Rohit Chopra, student loan ombudsman for the CFPB, initiated the meeting. While the CFPB does not have authority over federal loans—it investigates wrongdoing by private creditors and schools that lend directly to students—Chopra notes that he could invite others to the meeting, including state attorneys general. 

The students plan to use the conversation as an opportunity to leverage a little known provision of federal law to get rid of their debt, once and for all. Buried in the Higher Education Act is an escape hatch for students who believe they are the victims of fraud or deception by a school: They can file an official claim arguing against repaying loans related to such abusive practices. 

The Debt Collective activists plan to submit 300 of these so-called “defense to repayment” claims from former Corinthian students to the Department of Education at the meeting on Tuesday. Activists say they hope the gesture will heap extra pressure on the department, which helped secure $480 million in debt forgiveness for Corinthian students with private loans but has not said much about people who owe the government for their time at the schools. 

In the last four months, two groups of senators led by Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have written letters to Secretary Duncan demanding refunds for students of Corinthian who were victims of fraud and urging the department to make it easier for students to file the claims to get their debt discharged. In February, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sent a separate letter to the department seeking federal loan forgiveness for Corinthian students in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In a letter to senators dated Feb. 25, Under Secretary Mitchell suggested that the department was "carefully considering the issue" of how to improve processes for students to apply for debt cancelation through official channels.