By Kara Grace Hess and Caroline Housworth
As Dionntai Holyfield prepares to graduate from Wheaton College with a degree in psychology, his path looks like that of many seniors — graduate school applications and plans for what comes next. But his journey to this moment is anything but typical: Holyfield spent 16 years in prison before ever stepping onto campus.
“What I want people to know about me is that I’m not an anomaly — there are other guys in prison like me,” Holyfield said.
His day-to-day life as an undergraduate student at Wheaton is also unique. When Holyfield walks the stage for graduation, his wife, Christine, will be in the audience holding their baby, Titus. Holyfield’s days start around 4 a.m. to feed his son before reading Scripture, praying and doing homework. According to Holyfield, this reality would have been unimaginable without the care of a prison chaplain several years ago.
A few years before he was set to get out of prison, he began praying for a way to attend college affordably. The response came when his prison chaplain, Paul Engle, ran into the director of Wheaton College’s Correctional Ministries Institute, who was looking for someone exactly like Holyfield to apply. Receiving the news gave him immense hope.
As a formerly incarcerated, now married, Black man and eventually a father, his first few years on campus presented some challenges.
“I had to learn quickly that all spaces on campus aren’t my space,” he said. “I’m 33, and I remember one girl was like, ‘Why are you here?’”
Nonetheless, Holyfield brings his full self into classrooms. He will also hold a minor in anthropology after graduation. Brian Howell, the chair of the anthropology department, quickly came to value Holyfield’s unique perspective.
“As a Black man in the U.S., as a father and husband and someone who has been involved with numerous social systems in the U.S., he connects his experiences in uniquely personal and insightful ways,” Howell said.
Howell was one of several professors who attested to Holyfield’s character during the application process for Baylor University’s graduate program in social psychology. He continued his advocacy for him even after his application was rescinded. In the article published in the Christian Scholar’s Review titled “When Perceived Risk Overwhelms Mission,” Howell posed a question.
“Perhaps the most important question about risk is how Christians should consider what we’re willing to risk and for whom,” he wrote.
Holyfield was the first student with a criminal background to apply to the program; even so, the admissions team thought it worthwhile to determine how to proceed with no policy in place to review such an application. This left Holyfield optimistic; he was not expecting what came next.
The Student Conduct Committee, made up of undergraduate professors and midlevel administrators, reviewed his criminal background collectively. They sent their decision, with their main reasoning as to why they could not grant admission being due to the “nature” of his offenses, which posed undue “risk.”
Holyfield explained that he was 15 when he committed the crime in 2006 and 16 when his case was transferred to adult court. He became a Christian at 17 while incarcerated and was released at 31 in April 2022. He turns 36 on May 9, 2026.
According to court records, Holyfield was convicted in 2006 in Van Wert County, Ohio, after pleading guilty to attempted murder and felonious assault. The charges stem from March of that year and refer to a stabbing incident involving his foster mother and her 13-year-old daughter, for which Holyfield originally received an 18-year prison sentence.
Yet, Holyfield explained that there were aspects of the case that the committee at Baylor could not understand because they did not consult or interview him regarding his criminal background.
“In several instances, the prosecution intentionally left out or twisted details to further a narrative that would ensure I was charged as an adult at 15 years old,” he said. “Even omitting that, it was found that I was the victim in an incident of alleged sexual assault that resulted in my removal from a foster home.”
This complication made Baylor’s decision to rescind its offer more challenging for Holyfield.
“It feels like the gut-wrenching and super-unjust decision by the Student Conduct Committee at Baylor,” he said.
Through and despite all of this, Holyfield has seen what Christian character looks like. After learning of the admission decision, he had over 10 Wheaton faculty members who either reached out to Baylor in protest or reached out personally to him.
“I have been overwhelmed with support from faculty,” he said. “Talk about Christians who aren’t just like, ‘I’ll pray for you.’”
Christians like these, whom Holyfield is grateful for today, aren’t just a part of his present story of faith, but his larger testimony. The day he decided to enter into the faith was after Sandy Scholes, a woman who was part of “Epiphany,” an evangelical prison ministry, shared food and her testimony with him and anyone at the prison who wanted to listen.
“This lady was like, ‘Hey, I’m here to love on you guys,’” he recalled. “I’ve been to church enough times to know that it was around, but I was ready.”
As he leaves and graduates from Wheaton College, Holyfield wants people to believe in redemption for others in the way Wheaton and its faculty have for him, instead of viewing him as a liability. Living with integrity was not a flippant choice, but one that he’s making in faith, knowing that for many, he’s the first felon they’ve ever met.
“You don’t know the burdens that people carry when they come into the school,” he said. “I carry the burden of 3,000 inmates at a prison, who people are going to judge based on me.”
