PROVIDENCE -- In a matter of months he went from the state prison cell where he was sent for his admitted role in a January 2012 armed robbery to a dormitory room on the University of Rhode Island's Kingston campus.
And it appears that no one at the state university knew about Malcolm Jones' criminal record except his father, Carnell Jones Jr., URI's new $115,000-a-year director of enrollment services -- who had lined up a tuition waiver for his son.
The first the school knew of the student's criminal record was when his parole officer showed up on Jan. 30 to check in on him, according to a campus police report.
The discovery sparked a URI inquiry into how a student with Malcolm Jones' history was able to enroll, get a room on campus and a tuition waiver intended for legal "dependents" of URI employees.
It put the spotlight, once again, on the secrecy surrounding the tuition waivers given URI employees and their spouses, domestic partners and dependent children as an employment benefit.
At the center of the story is a father who says: "My son is a bright young man with a curious nature and a big heart, and I love him very much. He clearly needs direction, and my hope is that he seizes this opportunity at URI to make a fresh start. He has served his time and paid his debt."
Read more in the Sunday Providence Journal.