College students aren’t necessarily known as early risers, but on Tuesday morning Nia Page, a junior at Spelman College in Atlanta, made sure she was up well before 9 a.m.
That’s because her school was giving out tickets on a first-come first-serve basis beginning at 9:30 for an advanced screening of Beyoncé’s Homecoming documentary, which debuts Wednesday on Netflix NFLX, +0.36%
“It should be really exciting,” said Page, the rising student government president at Spelman, a prestigious black women’s college.
The film chronicles the making of Beyoncé’s Coachella performance last year, which was a celebration of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a category of colleges created before 1964 with the primary mission of educating black students. The production included marching band performances in the style you’d encounter at a football game featuring an HBCU team and step team routines reminiscent of those you might see performed by a black Greek letter organization.
The mega-star followed up the performance by announcing a scholarship, called the Homecoming Scholars Award Program, that provided $25,000 to four students at four different HBCUs. The singer reportedly hoped that both her performance and the scholarship would inspire more students to enroll at HBCUs.
It’s difficult to tease out Beyoncé’s role in any student’s decision to enroll at a given college, but her decision to highlight HBCUs certainly had an impact. When eagle-eyed Spelman students spotted their school’s T-shirt hanging on a rack near Beyoncé as she prepared for Coachella, the event “basically went viral on Spelman’s campus,” Page said. “We were very, very proud of that, we loved it.”
I know I'm not TRIPPIN!!! Is that a SPELMAN COLLEGE shirt hanging on a rack with clothes that are sitting next to Beyoncé!!!!! In the same room as BEYONCÉ!!! Oh honeyyyy yea you really can't tell us nothing now
