In North Carolina, students at Bennett College with past-due tuition bills in collection will see $1.7 million of their debts erased. The union of borrowers known as the Debt Collective purchased and paid off the student loans of nearly 500 Black women at Bennett, a historically Black, all-women liberal arts college in Greensboro. This comes as activists pressure President Biden to uphold his campaign pledge to cancel student debt — now a $1.7 trillion burden held by some 44 million people across the U.S.