COLLEGE AID MAY DISAPPEAR FOR MORE THAN 34,000 WITH DRUG CONVICTIONS

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.
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.

"Consistent with the department's overall position, we seek applications
from students that are complete and accurate, so we can provide aid to as
many eligible students as possible," she said.

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.

For a first drug-possession offense, ineligibility lasts a year after
conviction; for a second offense, two years. More convictions bar aid
indefinitely.

The law is tougher on traffickers. A single drug sale conviction means aid
ineligibility for two years; more than that and the ban is indefinite. Aid
can be restored if a student undergoes drug rehabilitation.