Think of the character Kurt from Glee, only without the tiara. And, he says, without the tolerance.
Jones' problems started on Day One, in the late summer of 2009. Because of overcrowding, he was assigned to share a room with six football players.
They were still at practice when he uncoupled his bunk bed and claimed his dresser. When he extended his hand to his new roommates, they ignored him. His parents watched anxiously.
When the roommates started talking crassly about female soccer players, Jones' mother, Kim, slipped away to find an administrator. By afternoon, Jones had a different place to live.
He made friends, he says - male and female, gay and straight. But he also made enemies. Everyone dresses up at Halloween, and Jones joined three girlfriends and a guy, sporting rabbit ears and tails.
A tormentor followed him around, calling him a faggot. He threw Jones' rabbit ears across the room. The next day, when Jones approached a sympathetic administrator, she already knew what had happened at the dance. She'd already told the other student to apologize in person.
But what the tormentor told him, Jones recalls, was, "This school doesn't want any change."
Says Jones, "Clearly, I was the change."
Although Delaware Valley's policy of no tolerance for hate crimes had comforted the Jones family, more incidents came that year - name-calling, homophobic cartoons drawn on a bathroom stall.
Sophomore year, Jones served as an orientation leader and peer mentor. The football players were already on campus, and the name-calling resumed. Jones complained to security. The school investigated. One of the players confessed.
Jones says the boy was ordered to attend a diversity lecture, but the one he went to was about Tourette's syndrome.
