TRUTH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The roughly 10 million students who fill out financial aid forms this year
will face a crucial - and some would say intrusive - question from the
federal government: Have you ever been convicted of using illegal drugs?

If the student does not answer, or marks "Yes" - as more than 35,000
applicants have done already this year - the aid request is subject to
automatic denial under a 1998 law that is being fully enforced for the
first time.

Yet while supporters of the law say they only want to teach drug users a
tough-love lesson, a growing chorus of critics says the law is flawed
because it targets poorer students and makes no effort to deny aid to
people who commit far more serious crimes unrelated to drugs.

"You can murder your grandmother and get financial aid, but you can't smoke
a joint," said Eileen O'Leary, financial aid director at Stonehill College
in Easton. "You are denied aid even if you are convicted of a [drug]
misdemeanor with no jail time. It is inequitable."

Even the bill's sponsor, US Representative Mark Souder, an Indiana
Republican, is not happy. "It hasn't worked out at all the way I intended,"
Souder said in an interview. The law, he believed, would apply to those
convicted of drug use while applying for or receiving the aid, rather than
anyone who honestly acknowledged a past conviction.

"It would be unbelievable for me as an Evangelical Christian to believe
that people can't repent and change in their lives," said Souder, blaming
Education Department bureaucrats for misinterpreting the law.

Education Department officials say they are following the law as written.
The wording is vague; the law says that financial aid shall be denied to "a
student who has been convicted" of a drug crime, leaving government lawyers
to interpret that as a prior conviction. In any case, department
spokeswoman Lindsey Kozberg said, the administration is consulting with
Souder about his "legislative intent" and she stressed that some applicants
with drug convictions may still be eligible for aid depending on the
severity of the offense and the amount of time that has passed since the
conviction.

"We are here to put aid in the hands of eligible students," Kozberg says.
"The Department of Education is not the one that sets the eligibility
criteria. That is the legislative branch."

About 39 percent of college students get some form of federal financial
aid, either through grants, low-interest loans, or a combination, totaling
$60 billion in the 1999-2000 school year, according to the National
Association of Student Financial Aid administrators. The Souder law does
not affect financial aid offered by states, schools, or other nonfederal
programs.

The issue has focused attention not only on how a vaguely written law can
have unintended consequences, but also on how far Congress should delve
into the lives of prospective students who have already paid whatever
penalty has been mandated by the criminal justice system. The matter has
become a cause celebre on campuses across the country, with a fast-growing
group called Students for Sensible Drug Policy fighting against it.

The matter has attracted attention also because the law is being fought by
a key part of the education establishment. The National Association of
Student Aid Administrators has taken a strong stand against it, saying that
thousands of prospective students who do not want to answer the drug
question may be withholding their aid applications and perhaps not attend
college.

Indeed, some educators say the law is hurting most the people it was
designed to help - students from lower- and middle-income families that
rely most heavily on aid - while having almost no effect on students from
wealthy families who would neither apply nor qualify for financial aid.
"You could do nothing better for your citizen, especially the poor one,
than let them get an education," says Stonehill's O'Leary, a leader in the
effort to repeal the law.

In one typical case, William Braswell Jr., a senior honors student in
computer science at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, was arrested in
January and convicted of possession of about a gram of marijuana. After he
informed the government of the conviction, his application for $3,000 in
aid for this year was automatically denied in a government form letter.

"You reported a '2' in response to Item 35," the letter said, referring to
his answer of "yes"for a drug conviction. "This indicates that you are
ineligible for student aid." Braswell, who favors the legalization of
marijuana, is now filing a correction based on the fact that a court
eventually erased his conviction, so he still hopes to get his aid. "I need
the $3,000," he says. "I'm broke."

The controversy over the law highlights the broader question of whether
government can help stop drug abuse through tougher penalties. Over the
years, legislators have grappled with whether to throw every drug offender
into prison or to focus more on prevention and rehabilitation.

Clearly, illegal drug use is widespread. The national Youth Risk Behavior
Survey conducted in 1999 found that 27 percent of high school students had
used marijuana in the prior 30 days, and 47 percent said they had smoked
marijuana during their lifetime. (By comparison, 9.5 percent said they had
used some form of cocaine during their lifetime.) The survey did not ask
how many had been arrested and convicted. Other surveys show that drug use
among teenagers has increased slightly in the last several years.

Financial aid administrators said they tried unsuccessfully to stop the law
and now want it repealed.

"We believe that, first of all, if an individual has paid their dues to
society as meted out by the justice system, they should not be denied the
opportunity to better themselves through financial aid" for college, said
Larry Zaglaniczny, director of congressional relations of the National
Association of Student Financial Aid administrators.

The problem with the Souder law became evident immediately after it was
enacted. Last year, to the astonishment of Education Department officials,
early returns showed that 20 percent of the people who applied for
financial aid either said they had been convicted of a drug offense or they
did not answer the question. Given that trend, 1.5 million people would
have been denied aid, far more than anticipated.

After much investigation, including student focus groups, the department
came to an embarrassing conclusion: The question was poorly written and
many applicants thought they didn't have to answer it. This year, the
department rewrote the question, adding, "Do not leave this question
blank." The new form says, "Have you ever been convicted of possessing or
selling illegal drugs?" Now, nearly all applicants answer.

Still, about 35,000 applicants might be denied aid, either because they
acknowledged a drug conviction (recent or otherwise) or left the question
blank.

Souder, who is discussing with the Bush administration clarifying the law,
blames a holdover from the Clinton administration for misconstruing his
legislation. "We don't buy that," responds Shawn Heller, a former Clinton
administration White House intern who now is national director of Students
for Sensible Drug Policy. "If he never intended the law to do this, then he
is still responsible for the tens of thousands of students who will be
losing their aid who he doesn't even think should lose their aid."

Souder stresses that his law does allow applicants to get aid after a
specified period, typically a year or more, if they agree to enter a
rehabilitation program and submit to unannounced drug testing. Opponents of
the law say Congress has no right to add penalties to drug sentences beyond
those imposed by the courts.

Michele Butcher of Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, is one such
opponent. Butcher says she was aware of the law but didn't think she would
ever get caught with marijuana. Now, she is facing trial this week for
misdemeanor possession of marijuana, and fears that if she is convicted,
"I'll be punished twice, once by the legal system and once through my
career." She notes that her financial aid is in loans, not grants, and that
she won't be able to attend school without the assistance.

A twist to this controversy is that it has highlighted the fact that the
federal government has no database that would automatically verify whether
an applicant has been convicted of a drug crime. Instead, the department
performs spot checks with local law enforcement officials. While students
with a drug conviction might be tempted to lie, that has its own risk.
Lying on a federal aid application is grounds for automatic denial.

Some critics of the law, including the association of student aid
administrators, say that Souder's efforts to fix it will not solve the
problem. The push to repeal the measure is an especially hot topic in
student newspapers and among student government associations.

"There is more interest on campuses in this than anything I can remember
since Vietnam," says US Representative Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat
who has sponsored legislation to repeal the law. He said the law was never
voted on directly by the full House; Frank wasn't aware of it until a
financial aid administrator mentioned it.

Souder, meanwhile, is frustrated that this controversy has overshadowed his
overall goal of curtailing illegal drug use. He notes that critics of the
drug war often complain that there is too much focus on penalties and not
enough on prevention. But if more students were afraid of the impact of his
law, he says, that would be a very large dose of prevention.