Jesse Crosson graduated from Ohio University in 2018 but didn’t set foot on the Athens campus until just a few months ago; he spent over a decade working toward a degree through correspondence courses, a distance learning format.
Crosson belongs to a smaller group of correspondence degree recipients than the usual demographic of deployed military members and students enrolled in online classes. According to New America, Crosson is one of 15% of adults who earned a postsecondary degree during incarceration.
According to his website, Crosson was arrested in 2002 for robbery and a separate shooting. After receiving a sentence of 32 years, double the standard sentencing guidelines, Crosson faced a reckoning with his position.
“I was sitting in the jail recently arrested in 2002, feeling completely hopeless … didn’t know college was an option,” Crosson said. “I was incredibly lucky to have friends and family who were pushing me and saying, ‘Hey, this doesn’t have to be the end. You can use this process, you can grow from this.’”
Due to its standing as the standard correspondence degree program of the early 2000s, OU was an easy choice when Crosson decided to enroll in university classes. He quickly began the 15-year process, a timeline that was prolonged by funding delays, approval from the prison, grading requirements from the university and other roadblocks. Nevertheless, Crosson continued studying and working toward his degree.
“It was slowly through that process that I began to feel a greater sense of possibility, or a greater sense of agency even,” Crosson said. “I was like, ‘Oh, if I could do this, maybe I can actually make my own decisions and not follow the crowd.’ It was a really profound experience.”
Due to the nature of the correspondence degree program, Crosson’s only option was to design his own major, a system which he believed any student could benefit from. He began the process by engaging in a variety of classes before creating his own program of study: Existential Psychology, a fusion of sociology and psychology classes.
“The whole search for me was a question of understanding how I had become the person that I had, and then also how I could change,” Crosson said. “Also the people around me, how could I best support them in that change … it really became this big question, this existential question of how did we end up here and what can we do to do better, to end up somewhere else.”
A few years after becoming an OU graduate, Crosson received a conditional pardon in 2021. He got off probation in 2024 and began traveling the country, eventually leading him to Athens in November.
“This email popped up on my phone and it was from Jesse,” Laura Sowers, the senior associate director of alumni relations, said. “I remember the email just being very authentic and transparent and vulnerable, saying ‘Hey, I received my degree while I was incarcerated … I’d love to see the campus and just feel that connection as a student now that I am out of prison.’”
In addition to touring the campus, visiting classic alumni spots and meeting the dean of University College, Crosson was introduced to student groups such as the OU chapter of the Innocence Project. According to BobcatConnect, the Innocence Project aims to “free the innocent and prevent wrongful conviction by educating the public about its causes and consequences.” Crosson used these meetings to advocate for his experience with the correspondence program and give students a glimpse into his unique Bobcat experience.
“Every time we hear a story that is outside the norm or outside of our own experience, I think there’s always something we can learn from that,” Sowers said. “Hearing his story of receiving his degree while incarcerated for a crime that he was convicted of and making that change while he was incarcerated and growing himself, I think it is a testament to Ohio University.”
In the years since his pardon, Crosson has founded and become the executive director of the Second Chancer Foundation, which has a goal of “connecting justice-impacted people with qualified mentors through technology,” according to its website. Through his work with the foundation, social media engagement and consulting jobs, Crosson has made a career out of using his experience to help reform the criminal legal process.
“There are a lot of people that are just like me, that with the right resources would hit the ground running and make a difference in the world, and so … my goal is that people see that and they’re willing to invest in people and not just throw them away,” Crosson said.
