CONVICTIONS MAY MEAN LESS AID

A ban on giving federal aid to college, graduate and
professional-school students with drug convictions could mean more
than 34,000 people will be denied loans and grants in the coming
school year -- more than triple those turned away in 2000-01. The
increase reflects a clarification in the U.S. Education Department's
aid application, which screens for people with drug records. The
change has brought louder protests against the ban. Even the measure's
author says enforcement has been taken too far.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., intended the aid ban to apply only to
students already getting loans or grants when convicted, an aide said.
Instead, education officials under President Bush -- following the
lead of those in the Clinton administration -- are denying aid to
people with previous drug convictions. Souder is trying to get them to
change their enforcement efforts to match his intent, said Angela
Flood, Souder's chief of staff.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has introduced a bill seeking the law's
repeal. Repeal is also the aim of the fledgling Students for Sensible
Drug Policy and its 140 campus chapters.

Higher-education leaders are protesting, too.

The law is "fundamentally flawed," and amounts to "double punishment"
- -- and bias -- against low- and middle-income students who must
undergo screening while their wealthier peers do not, Stanley
Ikenberry, head of the American Council on Education, wrote in May to
U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark. Hutchinson is Bush's nominee to run
the Drug Enforcement Administration.