Challenge - Spring/Summer 2012 - Tiffin University

12 | SPRING / SUMMER 2012 | CHALLENGE
She Said ‘YES’
A TU graduate said she knew she
and her boyfriend would get engaged, but she
didn’t know it would be immediately after she
received her management degree.
Shanice Alexander, a volleyball player, was
led to believe she and two teammates were
going to receive gifts from a coach after the
commencement ceremony. When a blindfold
was removed after she got outside, she saw her
boyfriend, Marquis Russell, a sophomore at Ohio
Dominican University, kneeling in front of her.
“Shanice Terrae’ Alexander, would you be my
wife” he asked her. She said”Yes,” he stood up
and they embraced as people clapped and cheered.
Alexander said she thought she might have
been about to receive balloons or flowers, and she was confused because she
didn’t know why she was being taken outside. When the blindfold was removed,
she saw the crowd but didn’t see Russell until she looked down.”I wanted to hit
him because he tricked me,” she said.
Russell, a sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 718th transportation battalion who returned in October from a deployment to
Kuwait, said he and Alexander had talked about getting married, and he knew she was going to accept his marriage proposal.
“The whole time during commencement, I was shaking,” he said.
“This is the happiest day of my life so far,” Shanice said.
This article appeared, in part, in The Advertiser-Tribune