June 10, 2008—Possibly the most dramatic story of any 2008  graduate belongs to thirty-year-old Andrés Idarraga, an ex-felon who served six-and-a-half years in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) for selling drugs. An economics and literature concentrator at Brown, he is headed to Yale Law School this fall, where he will focus on defending young people’s access to a quality education.

After immigrating to Rhode Island from Medellin, Colombia, at the age of seven, Idarraga did well in high school but began dealing drugs in his later teens. Incarcerated at twenty, he read voraciously in the prison library and was soon tutoring other inmates for their GED exams. After his release on parole, he entered the University of Rhode Island then transferred to Brown after one year.

Several years ago, when he realized that under existing Rhode Island law he would be unable to vote until his fifty-eighth birthday, Idarraga became a spokesman for the right of ex-felons to vote upon their release from prison. He teamed up with a local voters-rights organization to lobby for a state ballot referendum on the subject; it was approved in November 2006. Idarraga registered to vote immediately.

Read an interview wth Idarraga here.