Simply giving away $40,000 in this day and age is a big deal by any standard. With job creation slowing to a creep, and college tuition prices spiking each semester, students across the nation are scrambling to scrape together money for higher education. So when 18-year-old Allen Guei handed over his scholarship to help fellow teens fulfill their dreams of college, obviously, many were a bit shocked by the high school senior’s actions.
The windfall passed on by Guei began of all places- on the basketball court. Eight students from Compton High School of Los Angeles, California were randomly selected by grade point average to participate in a free-throw contest arranged by Hollywood screenwriter Court Crandall. In efforts to cultivate a new image of the Compton neighborhoods plagued by violence and poverty, Crandall came up with the idea of a competition that would foster good will and show the positive side of an area often viewed with contempt. Eight students would all be equalized by the free-throw line, as one by one they would take their shot at the massive scholarship, in addition to a smaller $5,000 scholarship given to all participants.
A product of immigrants from the African Ivory Coast, Guei was fully aware of how far the money could go in his own pocket. After winning by one basket, the teen could have easily accepted his winnings and never looked back. However, mere weeks after winning the money, Guei was informed that he had landed a full scholarship to attend California State University at Northridge. Under the rules of the free-throw competition and NCAA regulations, the basketball star could have kept the money and applied it to his own schooling. Instead, Guei made the selfless decision to impact the lives of the other seven contestants.
On the day of the 2011 Compton High School commencement ceremony, Guei asked the principle to reveal his decision, shocking the other contestants, their families, and soon the entire nation. “I was already well taken care of to go to school, to go to university for free. …I felt like they needed it more than I did,” said Guei in an interview with ESPN, citing a bad economy as a catalyst behind his decision.
With the help of Guei, each contestant in the competition now has roughly $11,000 to begin matriculation at their chosen institutions, proving that even in hard times, random acts of kindness can go a long way. Crandall, who has created a documentary about the competition, Allan Guei, and the outcome no one expected, intends to submit the film to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
