The 2022 graduating class of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, learned Saturday at their commencement convocation that an anonymous donor covered their outstanding tuition balances.
In a release, Wiley College said more than 100 graduates were in attendance when President Herman J. Felton, Ph.D., announced that their balances had been paid. The moment, captured on camera, can be watched below:
“You are debt-free. You do not owe the college a penny. If you have a balance, you had a balance,” Felton said in the video shared on Facebook by the college.
The graduating class’s combined debt was estimated at $300,000, Wiley said in the release.
Felton stated:
Our commitment to our students goes beyond their time while they are enrolled. We are constantly communicating with donors to assist students in these ways so that they can begin their after-college experience with less debt. We are grateful for this anonymous donor who will assist the students in paying off their balances to Wiley College and help us achieve institutional goals of graduating our students with little to no debt.
Wiley College, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, was founded in 1873 and serves students “who have expressed a desire and potential for learning in a Christian environment,” the release states.
The school and a former professor, Michael B. Tolson, were central to Denzel Washington’s 2007 film The Great Debaters, which chronicled Tolson’s formation of Wiley College’s first debate team in 1935, IMDB notes. The same year, the historically black college squared off in a debate against the University of Southern California (USC) when segregation was still prevalent in the United States, the Associated Press reported. Wiley College proved victorious over the nationally recognized USC.
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