Students at Bennett College, an all-female HBCU in Greensboro, North Carolina, received a major blessing from the Debt Collective, an organization that’s “fighting to cancel debts and defend millions of households.”
Debt Collective activists worked to cancel all the debt Bennett College students owed to the institution, which amounted to $1.7M.
“We just CANCELED $1.7M of student debt for every former student that owed money directly to Bennett College — an HBCU for women in NC,” the group wrote on an Instagram post.
“We canceled unpaid bills and college debt owed directly to Bennett College. We can’t cancel federal student loans — they’re owed by the government. But President Biden can — and should,” the Debt Collective noted on one of the post’s slides.
Debt Collective activists contacted the HBCU‘s president, Suzanne Walsh, earlier this year offering to clear the students‘ Bennett College debt, though she humorously thought the matter was spam at first.
“People just don’t reach out and say, ‘We can help your students pay off their debts,'” Walsh recalled thinking at the time.
However, the offer ultimately proved to be the real deal.
My student loans from
Bennett College we’re canceled 😭😭😭— Amb ✨ (@Amb_bition) May 16, 2022
Braxton Brewington, press secretary for Debt Collective, spoke on the initiative during an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
“We believe student debt is unjust and is disproportionately harming Black women and Black borrowers in particular,” he said when discussing why the Debt Collective selected Bennett College, one of only 2 historically Black women’s colleges in the country.
Brewington also reverberated that the Debt Collective covered debts owed directly to the university — including parking tickets, library charges and unpaid tuition. Resultingly, Bennett College students with federal student loans will still have to pay the government back, though Debt Collective is calling on the Biden Administration to do its part in the fight.
“This [serves as] an indictment to the Biden Administration. Why do a group of activists have to take on what really is the role of the federal government?” Brewington noted.
