PAST DRUG USE MAY JEOPARDIZE COLLEGE AID

A ban on giving federal aid to college 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. But the change
has brought louder protests against the law: Even the measure's author says
enforcement has been taken too far.

U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, intended the aid ban to apply
only to college students already getting loans or grants when convicted, an
aide said.

Instead, education officials in the Clinton administration and now under
President Bush 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.

Spokesmen for Northern Kentucky University, Thomas More College and the
University of Cincinnati said they don't know how many students have been
denied financial aid since the law was passed because the students apply
directly to the federal government for help.

Chris Cole, a spokesman for NKU, which has 12,000 students, said perhaps a
"handful of people" have been denied financial aid since the law took
effect. Bob Edwards, a spokesman for Thomas More College, a private school
of 1,500 in Crestview Hills, said no students have been denied aid there
because of drug convictions.

And Chris Curran, a spokeswoman for UC, which has 33,000 students, said
officials at her college checked recently and haven't found any students
there who have been denied.

"Our most recent search of records didn't show us any statistics," Ms.
Curran said.

Ms. Curran said it's possible that some students don't bother to apply for
financial aid once they see the application that asks for prior drug
convictions.

NKU's U.S. 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, the 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.

The council is "concerned that this provision will prove to be an
insurmountable obstacle to far too many students, causing many of them to
abandon their hope of a college education," Ikenberry wrote on behalf of 13
groups, including the nation's major associations of colleges and universities.

The education agency is only doing what Congress asked, said Lindsey
Kozberg, Education Department spokeswoman. The law, approved in 1998, bars
federal grants, work-study money and U.S.-backed and subsidized student
loans to anyone convicted of selling or possessing drugs.