APPEAL OR REPEAL

College Fund Ban Convicts Itself

When the congressman who sponsors the bill that becomes law is unhappy with
it, it's a hard-to-miss clue that something is seriously wrong.

U.S. Rep. Mark Souder said he originally sponsored a bill to take away
government funds and grants from students who already had the money, but in
college were squandering their opportunities by using drugs.

He never meant for the law to keep students with past drug convictions from
being able to go to college, especially if they'd either matured into
law-abiding young people, or successfully gone through rehab.

Unfortunately, that's not the way the law translated into practice. Under
it, any student ever convicted is, for a certain time, ineligible for
federal grants, work-study money and U.S.-backed and subsidized student loans.

It's too harsh.

The ineligibility has a time limit. But students filling out applications
that ask about a drug charge -- and then receive long forms that manage to
confuse everyone -- will join 34,000 students being turned down for the money.

Serves them right, some might argue. But The American Council on Education
wouldn't. The council sees the other side of a law that doesn't so much act
as a deterrent against drug use, but as a disincentive for a young person
to straighten out a life that's gotten off track.

An opportunity to attend college is an incentive for teens to turn their
lives around. To have that incentive ripped away -- even delayed for a year
or two, which seems a lifetime to young people -- may only encourage a
return to drugs.

Wasted kids shouldn't waste government loans and grants that other students
would put to proper use.

But it's also waste when students perceive it, even if wrongly, as a "one
strike you're out" law for a college education.

Congress should repeal the law and write a better one that does what it's
intended to do.