Pubdate: Sat, 30 Jul 2005
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2005 Star Tribune
Contact:  http://www.startribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/266
Author: Rob Hotakainen and Melissa Lee
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?219 (Students for Sensible Drug Policy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hea.htm (Higher Education Act)

LIMITS ON STUDENT AID UP FOR VOTE

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Jill Johnson, 21, paid a $600 fine after she tried
to sneak a pipe and marijuana into a concert last summer, but she says
she only occasionally smokes the drug and should not be denied college
financial aid for doing so.

"I think that I deserve to have money and be able to go to school ...
I go back home to Elk River, and everybody's doing meth and they're
doing coke and all this stuff," she said. "I mean, I've never touched
it. I look at them, and I think they have a drug problem."

After hearing similar complaints from students for years, Congress is
rethinking a five-year-old law that has denied federal grants and
loans to tens of thousands of students with drug convictions.

Under a bill headed for a House vote in September, students convicted
of drug crimes before enrolling in college would be eligible for aid,
while those convicted while attending college would still lose their
eligibility.

"There needs to be some incentive to keep you from getting on drugs,"
said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., a member of the House Education
Committee, which approved the plan last week. "The loss of your
student aid is an appropriate tool."

Kline said the plan "seems pretty straightforward to me. It simply
says if you're getting aid and using drugs, you should stop or get
help, or you're not going to get the aid."

Arguments against

Critics of the proposed change say it does not go far enough. They say
it would do nothing to help students such as Johnson, who worked two
part-time jobs last year to make up for the loss of financial aid.

"It's still really going to affect the average college student caught
with a joint on campus," said Chris Mulligan, campaign director of the
Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform.

He estimated 35,000 students lose their aid every year because of the
provision. Officials say there is no way to know the effects of the
law because no one tracks how many convicted students do not bother to
apply for aid because of the law.

Some opponents also say the current law is discriminatory because most
of those convicted on drug charges are members of minority groups or
from low-income families.

Lissa Jones, executive director of Minnesota-based African American
Family Services, said the law is an example of racism playing out in
public policy. "The drug provision is about identifying a group of
individuals and saying they are unworthy because they have made bad
decisions in the past," she said.

Discriminatory law?

Joel Johnson, past president of the University of Minnesota Law
School's College Republicans, dismissed the idea that the law
discriminates.

"It emphasizes what society deems is appropriate behavior," said
Johnson, who graduated from the law school this year. "We've said drug
use is a bad thing, something we want to deter. This is no more
discriminatory than the drug laws themselves."

As the House prepares to vote on scaling back the law, some groups
urge that it be abolished altogether. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.,
co-sponsor of a bill to scrap the law, said it is unacceptable to
single out ex-offenders with drug convictions.

"There is no other category of crime that has a ban on financial-aid
eligibility," he said.

Student groups also are lobbying Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., to
sponsor a bill in the Senate to get rid of the law, but Coleman is not
interested. In a statement, he said the current law is "a reasonable
approach" as it stands.

A big priority

Mulligan said the coalition has lined up hundreds of groups to support
the bill to abolish the law, including nearly a dozen in Minnesota.
One of those is Students for Sensible Drug Policy, which has a chapter
at the University of Minnesota's Law School.

Andrew Deutsch, a member who will be a third-year law student this
fall, said the legislation is one of the group's priorities.

"Our biggest concern with it is that drug provisions tend to affect
minorities ... That's a fundamental flaw," he said.

Under the current law, students with one federal or state drug
possession conviction lose aid for a year after the offense. For a
second possession offense, aid is denied for two years. A third
offense results in losing aid indefinitely. Penalties for drug sales
convictions are steeper, with the first offense costing students two
years of aid and the second making them permanently ineligible.

Johnson, who graduated from Elk River High School in 2002, had never
been arrested until last summer, after she completed her sophomore
year at St. Cloud State University. Her purse was searched as she and
some friends tried to gain entry to a rock concert in Somerset, Wis.

Afterward, Johnson became ineligible for financial aid for her junior
year and had to work two jobs, baby-sitting at a fitness center and
working as a sales clerk, to pay her college expenses. She said if
Congress wants to penalize students and make sure taxpayer money is
not spent on drugs, federal officials could simply send checks
directly to the university to pay for tuition and housing. But she
said it is unfair for students who make a mistake to lose all of their
financial aid.

"It's harder to concentrate on school and concentrate on yourself if
you're stressing about money and how you're going to pay for school,"
said Johnson, who hopes to work in public relations after graduating
next year.

As for the marijuana, she says she no longer buys it. And she no
longer tries to sneak it into concerts.

"I leave that up to my friends," she said. "I have bad luck. If I
tried it, I'm sure it would happen again."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin