Alonzo Jones

New Found Freedoms: Navigating the Transition to College Life

The transition from high school to college represents one of the most significant periods of personal growth in a young adult’s life. For many students, it is the first experience living independently, managing their own time, making consequential decisions, and navigating new social environments without direct parental oversight.

New Found Freedoms explores the opportunities, responsibilities, and realities that accompany this transition. Through engaging discussion, practical examples, and reflection, students examine how everyday choices influence their academic success, personal well-being, relationships, and future aspirations. The program encourages students to embrace the freedom of college life while developing the habits and decision-making skills necessary to thrive both inside and outside the classroom.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this program, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the opportunities and responsibilities that accompany increased independence in college.
• Evaluate how daily decisions influence long-term academic, personal, and professional outcomes.
• Identify common challenges faced by first-year students, including social pressures, time management, substance use, relationships, and digital engagement.
• Develop strategies for making informed and healthy choices in unfamiliar situations.
• Understand the importance of personal reputation, accountability, and self-management during the college years.
• Identify campus resources and support systems that contribute to student success and well-being.
• Create a personal framework for navigating freedom, responsibility, and goal attainment throughout their college experience.

Ideal Audience:

• New Student Orientation Programs
• First-Year Experience Courses
• Student Success Initiatives
• Summer Bridge Programs

Becoming You: Prioritizing What Matters Most in College

“Different places require different versions of you, but your future depends on knowing which version should lead.”

College offers more freedom, more opportunities, and more choices than any previous stage of life. Yet success is rarely determined by readiness alone—it is shaped by the daily decisions students make and the priorities they choose to embrace.

In this engaging and interactive presentation, AJ Jones introduces a practical framework that helps students understand how different environments, relationships, and responsibilities influence behavior and decision-making. Through the Becoming You framework, participants explore the many roles they occupy—from student and friend to athlete, leader, employee, or family member—and learn how to prioritize those roles in ways that support long-term success.

Students leave with a deeper understanding of themselves, a greater awareness of how context influences choices, and a practical framework for making decisions that align with their goals, values, and future aspirations.

Ideal for first-year students, orientation programs, student leadership conferences, student-athlete development programs, and first-generation student initiatives.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of attending this program, students will:

• Identify the multiple roles and responsibilities they navigate throughout the college experience.
• Understand how environments, peer groups, and situations influence behavior and decision-making.
• Learn how to prioritize competing identities and responsibilities in ways that support academic and personal success.
• Recognize the relationship between present-day choices and future outcomes.
• Develop a practical framework for making intentional decisions aligned with their goals and values.
• Leave with greater self-awareness, accountability, and confidence in navigating college life.

The Underground: Hazing Culture Behind Closed Doors

I was hazed. I hazed. I was suspended. The pledging process was banned.  We went underground. Hazing continued, as it still does today.

What goes down in the underground? A century-plus of service, activism, leadership, cultural development, and philanthropy become vulnerable to what goes down in the underground. The personal development of its members and their impact upon college, local, state, national, and global growth is too significant and too rich not to continuously examine what goes on in the underground. The underground is where fraternity, and unfortunately sometimes its members, go to die.

In the program, Alonzo Jones shares the history of hazing and the impact it has on communities. He examines and exposes the underground culture of fraternities and challenges students to create a fraternal legacy worth being proud of.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of attending this program, students will:

• Understand the meaning and consequences of hazing.
• Understand the impact BGLOs had and continue to have on cultural uplift.
• Explore anti-hazing strategies that still yield high enthusiasm, strong brother/sisterhood bonds, and committed members working on behalf of the chapter and national priorities.

The Past, The Present, & The Future of Black College Students

Since the turn of the 20th century, Black or African American youth have been attending colleges to create new opportunities for themselves, their families, and the community. While still under-represented in college-going rates and completion, those who have and are attending have had a tremendous impact on racial justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity. Whether at Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Predominantly White Institutions, across the decades, Black students have organized to bring voice and change to segregation, civil rights, voting rights, first-generation programs, police violence, political representation, and most recently, corporate and higher education policy. This presentation outlines the distinct time periods shaping the Black journey within America from arrival to Black Lives Matter, the role students served in mobilization, and their historical, present, and future impact.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of attending this program, students will:

• Connect themselves to the work of the ancestors and elders in creating positive change in the country and for the culture.
• Learn how the unique age-set of 18-22 compels young people towards seeking societal change through notions of fairness and justice through action and risk.
• Discover multiple pathways and strategies to address societal issues that include cultural solidarity work, coalition building, and earnest engagement of those perceived to be in opposition to particular causes.
• Affirm the importance of involvement in campus clubs and organizations to join with peers to raise awareness on various issues and develop the leadership skills necessary to address them

Living Up to Our Founders’ Expectations Around Culture and Community

The Greek experience is a dynamic opportunity for leadership development, genuine brotherhood and sisterhood, and an opportunity to continue the legacy of prior generations on behalf of cultural uplift. Historically, Black fraternities and sororities have been around since the turn of the 20th Century. More recently Latino/a, Asian, Native and multicultural communities have also formed Greek organizations. A campus with a robust and diverse Greek community is demonstrating inclusion and cultural development in its practices. This presentation challenges members to anchor themselves within their founding principles, to avoid the hazing history of Greek organizations, and to apply their learning through their membership process to benefit the campus community and the priorities of their national organization.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of attending this program, students will:

• Understand and ensure how three generations of fraternity and sorority members must be present in the initiation process to minimize incidents of hazing
• Distinguish in each audience members’ mind that they did go through a rite of passage and have been trained to lead and organize on behalf of their respective agendas.
• Be empowered each audience member to understand the importance of their organization on addressing cultural issues on campus and in their communitites.

Sex, Money, and Super Bowls: Navigating Manhood, Modern Romance, and Team Culture

In the high-stakes world of athletics, performance on the field is heavily influenced by choices made off it. Sex, Money, and Super Bowls is a powerful, candid workshop specifically designed to help collegiate and pro male athletes navigate the unique pressures of modern culture. This presentation challenges men to look beyond short-term gratification and recognize how current lifestyle and sexual choices can adversely impact their team’s image, their own personal development, and their capacity for satisfaction within future monogamous marriages.

Led by veteran speaker Alonzo Jones, this session supports athletic department and team goals surrounding respect, brand protection, and healthy decision-making. By reframing what it means to be a champion in life, the program inspires athletes to become men of high character, elite teammates, and solid future husbands and fathers.

Learning Outcomes

Through interactive dialogue and real-world examples, participants will::

• Navigate the Digital Accelerant: Examine how social media and instant digital access unnaturally accelerate the sexual timeline compared to traditional, in-person engagement.
• Understand Emotional Development: Discover how maintaining multiple partners simultaneously can negatively impact long-term emotional and sexual growth.
• Build Emotional Intimacy: Begin a vital process of self-examination to develop the emotional intimacy necessary for sustained, healthy future relationships.
• Bridge the Locker Room Gap: Foster open, constructive conversations between rookies, veterans, and coaches regarding dating, marriage, and fatherhood.
• Balance Tech and Touch: Learn to balance virtual interactions with face-to-face connections to build more meaningful personal and professional bonds.

Race, Rationalization, and Humanness: A Look Into the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King

The greatest injustice we do to our historical leaders is to place them into the realm of the untouchable. Too often, we deify the personality and miss the opportunity to accept their humanness as an example of how to think about and engage a highly diverse society and world.

The program chronicles Dr. King’s life while in college, his journey to Montgomery, the passing of the Civil Rights Act, and the five-year period after the ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ concluding with his assassination, April 4, 1968. The program explores themes and messages still relevant to today’s college students and future leaders.

The aim of this presentation is to support university goals around inclusion, affinity, civility, and critical thinking among a diverse demographic student body and is a perfect fit for any community program for Black History Month.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of attending this program, students will:

• Understand why Dr. King was not successful in post-civil rights activism attempting to address poverty and housing segregation in the North.
• Begin a process of self-examination and learn steps that lead towards greater intentionality in understanding individual and cultural identities, including their own and that of fellow students.