Senior Alex Pryor has won this year's Wendell Phillips Award, an annual prize that recognizes an upperclassman of noteworthy speaking ability and public service.
Pryor, the Tufts Community Union historian, beat out four other nominees in earning a spot as the only student speaker at this May's Commencement ceremony.
"It's a wonderful honor to be the student who speaks at the Baccalaureate ceremony," Pryor said.
The Wendell Phillips Memorial Scholarship was established in 1896 by the Wendell Phillips Memorial Fund Association in honor of the famous Boston-area preacher and abolitionist. The Office of Student Affairs (OSA) bestows the award annually, and only juniors and seniors are eligible.
The recipient of the award must have "best demonstrated both marked ability as a speaker and a high sense of public responsibility," according to the OSA.
In addition to being given a speech at Commencement, Pryor will receive a small cash prize, according to the OSA.
The Committee on Student Life (CSL) chose five finalists in January. The finalists were charged with constructing three-to-five-minute speeches from the prompt, "How has something you learned at Tufts affected the way you serve your own community or communities?" The finalists delivered their speeches to judges from the CSL on Monday.
In her speech, Pryor discussed how her coworkers at a restaurant had opened her eyes to the pitfalls of the United States' health-care system. She said that she felt a responsibility to use her Tufts education to help solve this problem.
"I spoke about the responsibility that comes with a Tufts education, about how studying here enables us to fix problems that others can't because the problems they need to fix are the very ones that prevent them from fixing them," she said.
Pryor plans on offering a slightly tweaked version of this message in her Commencement address. "I think I'd like to convey the same message as I did in the speech I gave on Monday, but I have to broaden it because I spoke mostly about health-care policy, but I think I'd like to ... make it a bit more celebratory because we're celebrating our graduation," she said.
Aside from Pryor, the other four finalists for the award were junior Jessica Snow and seniors Harsha Dronamraju, Anna Gollub and Meredith Pickett.
Wendell Phillips was a famed 19th-century abolitionist and orator. The Bostonian also fought for women suffrage and workers' rights, among other causes.
Phillips received his bachelor's degree in 1831, and his law degree in 1834, from Harvard University. He died in 1884.
This article has been amended from its original version
