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A new bill up for debate in Congress this month may reverse the federal law refusing financial aid to college students on the basis of drug possession.
In 1998, U.S. Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) introduced an amendment to the Higher Education Act that made it possible for the government to deny or delay financial aid to convicted drug offenders. Since the amendment has been in effect, nearly 100,000 students have been denied financial aid, some reporting only misdemeanor offenses.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), along with 38 co-sponsors, recently submitted a bill to Congress to eliminate the drug provision of the HEA. The bill is expected to quickly gain bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, according to Ben Gaines, coordinator of the Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform (CHEAR).
Students for a Sensible Drug Policy have rallied in support of what they call a misguided and destructive law.
“Specifically using access to education to fight the war on drugs is appalling,” Gaines said in a press release. “Say what you will about drug offenders, but they’ve already faced criminal sanctions and now we’re trying to deny them an opportunity to get over anything they’ve done before.”
Since 1998, SSDP has grown to more than 200 chapters nationwide and has been successful in lobbying 100 student governments to pass resolutions in support of the repeal of this act.
“Rep. Frank deserves the gratitude of thousands of students for leading congressional efforts to repeal what has become the No. 1 obstacle to students seeking higher education,” Gaines said. “Denying financial aid to students because of this is indefensible.”
One of the biggest problems Gaines and others see with the policy is its racially discriminatory impact. Several civil rights groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, have also endorsed the policy’s reform.
“Racial profiling in the criminal justice system disproportionately targets blacks and Hispanics, making them more susceptible to drug convictions,” Wade Henderson, director of the LCCR, said in a press release. “This discriminatory denial of educational opportunities to minority students should be repealed.”
“We don’t think Souder’s intentions were for this to have a discriminatory impact when he introduced the provision in 1998,” Gaines said. “And we’re not trying to accuse him of directly discriminating, but he has.”
Gaines also feels the provision is counterproductive because it ignores the major substance abuse problem plaguing campuses all over the country: alcohol abuse.
“Smoking a joint is no more an indicator of addiction than underage drinking is a sign of alcoholism,” he said.
The National Association of Financial Aid Administers has pledged its support to CHEAR in hopes of eliminating needless paperwork and background checks.
“This policy has nothing to do with financial aid and doesn’t belong here,” Peggy Crawford, director of student financial aid at the University of Maine, said. “The federal government should not be linking drugs to financial aid.”
Crawford, who calls the policy “phenomenally selective,” bears the burden of conducting additional research and correspondence with students who have answered “yes” to question 35 on the FAFSA.
“At one point they had us checking the police logs in the papers to see if any of our students were being arrested or convicted on drug charges,” Crawford said. “We can’t deal with that.”
Two UMaine students have been affected by the drug provision this year, forcing one of them to postpone their education due to lack of financial aid.
The other has opted to enter a drug rehabilitation program, at his own expense, and await re-instatement of his financial aid pending completion of the program.
While Crawford would like to see the policy reformed, she also understands the difficulty in voting against a subject like this.
“There’s so much gray area. How do you vote yes or no on an issue that’s so ‘apple pie’ for much of America?” Crawford said. “When we ask if drug offenders should get our federal dollars, we lose the big picture of why financial aid was created in the first place.”
