WILBERFORCE, Ohio - Wilberforce University graduates had another reason to celebrate after an announcement at last Saturday’s commencement for the Classes of 2020 and 2021.

University President Elfred Anthony Pinkard announced at the end of the morning ceremony at Gaston Lewis Gymnasium that the graduates’ financial debts to the university were being eliminated. Thanks to the United Negro College Fund, Jack and Jill Inc. and funding from other sources, $375,000 in debt and fines owed to the school by graduates of the two classes was being taken care of.

Graduates and their families were overcome with joy and emotion.

“I couldn’t believe it when he said it,” graduate Rodman Allen of Detroit told the Dayton Daily News. “I know now God will be with me. Now I can use that money and invest in my future.”

While students will still be responsible for federal loans and debts owed to other lenders, several students said the unexpected gift will help them start the next phase of their lives with less anxiety.

“During the ceremony I was thinking, ‘I have to pay all this debt back. I have to get a job.’ But as soon as Dr. Pinkard said ‘debt free,’ I didn’t have to worry about anything else,” said Joshua Spears.

Since the start of the pandemic, the private, historically Black university started in 1856 has been providing a major share of financial help for students. Students received refunds for food and housing when the campus shut down in 2020. But since March 2020, scholarships and other institutional funding provided for more than 90 percent of students’ school bills.

Dr. Pinkard said after he got approval for the debt forgiveness from the university’s Board of Trustees, he held the information in secret until the commencement.

“As these graduates begin their lives as responsible adults, we are honored to be able to give them a fresh start by relieving their student debt to the university,” Dr. Pinkard said in a statement.

“They did not allow a global pandemic to derail their journey to complete their college education, and I think that’s an incredible acknowledgement of their resilience and their fortitude.”

Dr. Pinkard said he hoped the university’s “show of our appreciation of their resilience and fortitude instills in (graduates) the willingness to reach back and help others as well.”

More than 160 students received degrees during the ceremony. Wilberforce also awarded honorary degrees posthumously to civil rights activists Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, both of Mississippi.

Mr. Evers, a field secretary for the NCCAP who helped organize boycotts and protests to fight racial segregation, was assassinated at age 37 outside his home in Jackson, Miss., by a white nationalist in June 1963.

Ms. Hamer, who worked for decades for voting rights and women’s rights, helped organize Mississippi’s Freedom Summer in 1964 to register African-American voters. She also was a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that she sought to have seated as the state’s official delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She also was a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She died in 1977 at age 59.