U.S. education secretary Ronald Paige has tightened the enforcement of Clinton-era legislation that bars federal aid to college students who have been convicted of a drug-related offense. Tens of thousands of people, including those found guilty of misdemeanors, could be denied student loans as a result.
According to the April 25 Wall Street Journal, the legislation "denies federal financial aid to anyone convicted of a drug crime, whether smoking marijuana or trafficking heroin. The length of ineligibility varies according to the gravity of the offense and the number of convictions."
For example, a person convicted of marijuana possession is denied aid for a year from the date they were found guilty. Three drugs convictions of any type disqualifies a student from ever receiving federal aid--unless he or she completes a treatment program and is prepared to submit to random drug tests.
Student groups have joined college administrators in opposing the law since its inception. A repeal bill, considered to have little hope of success in the Congress, has been endorsed by student governments at 59 campuses.
Ariel Neuman, the president of the student government at Columbia University in New York, said in an April 30 phone interview that the university's student government association "passed a motion a couple of months ago calling for the law to be rescinded." He explained that relatively few Columbia applicants would be affected since "students here are generally younger and the measures apply to people convicted as adults. But we thought that Columbia should be open for everyone."
The 1998 law--incorporated in a bill on federal education spending--"was passed with scant debate," reported the Journal. The following year the education department added a question about drug convictions to financial aid applications, and 9,000 applicants acknowledged having a drug record. They were all denied assistance.
The 279,000 people who did not answer the question, however, were not penalized. Government officials then added a sentence to the form stating the question must be answered. Last month Paige announced that the government will deny funds to anybody who failed to respond to the question.
To date, with around one-third of applications in hand for the coming school year, some 26,000 people appear ineligible for the assistance. One student, Kristopher Sperry, told the Journal that he was forced to drop out of school this semester because he could not afford the hundreds of dollars in tuition fees previously covered by the government. Sperry, a former factory worker, has two misdemeanor marijuana convictions--one for possession of the drug, and one for possession of a water pipe.
Prison inmates who try to enroll in college courses while doing time will be hit hard by the government's approach. The restrictions will reinforce the impact of a 1994 decision by Congress to deny workers behind bars any benefit from the government's main program of student aid, the Pell grants.