TOUGHER BUSH STANCE ON OBSCURE LAW HITS STUDENTS SEEKING FINANCIAL AID

Any Drug Conviction Bars Applicants From Getting Federal College Funds

Murderers May Still Apply

Last year, Kristopher Sperry, a young man with a longtime marijuana
habit, decided to clean up his life. He got married, became a father,
joined a Baptist church and enrolled as a freshman at Arkansas State
University. He earned a "B" average and maintained a spotless
disciplinary record.

But this semester, the 23-year-old former factory worker lost his
financial aid and had to drop out of school because he couldn't afford
the $600 tuition. The reason: He had two misdemeanor drug convictions,
one in 1998 for marijuana possession and one in 1999 for possession of
drug paraphernalia, namely a water pipe. Under a three-year-old law,
that makes him ineligible for federal student aid.

"Arsonists, burglars and convicted felons can still qualify for aid,"
complains Mr. Sperry, who had his driver's license temporarily
revoked, paid $275 in fines and performed a day of community service
as a result of the convictions. "I've already paid my price for my
crime, I believe. Now I'm having to pay an even more severe
price, hindering my education."

From Pot to Heroin

The law Mr. Sperry ran afoul of passed with scant debate in 1998 as
part of a massive bill reauthorizing all federal spending on
postsecondary education. It denies federal student financial aid to
anyone convicted of a drug crime, whether smoking marijuana or
trafficking heroin. The length of ineligibility varies according to
the gravity of the offense and the number of convictions. A single
conviction of Marijuana possession, by far the most common drug
charge, disqualifies a student for a year from the date of conviction.
People convicted of crimes that don't involve drugs, no matter how
serious, are eligible for student aid.

The law has been little noticed until recently because the Clinton
administration enforced it only very loosely. But the new Bush
administration has decided to get strict.

Consequently, some 26,000 people appear ineligible for federal
financial aid for the upcoming school year with a little more than a
third of the expected

applications in hand. Supporters of the law call it an important step
in fighting drugs, arguing it will force many student drug users to
change their behavior for fear of losing aid. But opponents warn that
the law deters many drug offenders from applying to educational
programs and deprives them of an opportunity to remake their lives.

Confusion has surrounded the implementation of the law from the start.
Officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations say the
difference in enforcement stems not from a divergence in philosophy
but rather uncertainty about how to police the law. In an effort to
comply with it, the Clinton Education Department in 1999 added a new
question to the federal financial aid application for the 2000-2001
academic year, asking about drug convictions. Of the 9.8 million
applicants, only about 9,000 acknowledged having a drug record on the
form. As a result,they were denied aid.

But 279,000 more applicants left the question blank. After heated
internal debate, the Education Department decided to award aid to all
of those people, contending that a blank probably meant "No" because
the question was poorly worded.

Fixing the Question

Realizing they had a problem, Clinton officials tested the question on
student focus groups and concluded they needed to rewrite it. The
revised question on the form for the 2001-2002 school year reads: "Do
not leave this question blank. Have you ever been convicted of
possessing or selling illegal drugs?"

Then the Bush administration took over. Last month Education Secretary
Rod Paige, after consulting with the department's legal counsel,
decided that the wording was now so clear that the government should
deny aid to anyone who left it blank.

"We arrived at a practice we felt reflected the intent of Congress,"
says Lindsay Kozberg, an Education Department spokeswoman. She
declined to comment further about the internal deliberations.

This year, as of April 8, about 11,000 students out of 3.9 million
applicants have left the question blank, and more than 15,000 have
been declared ineligible by admitting to a drug conviction. The
Education Department is still reviewing many of these cases.

Student groups and administrators at many campuses have opposed the
law since its inception, but now their protest is rising. Student
governments at 59 colleges, as well as a national association of
college financial aid officers, have endorsed a repeal bill sponsored
by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. But the bill,
which failed last year, stands little chance of passing a Republican
Congress since many lawmakers are reluctant to look soft on drugs.

Still, U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican who sponsored the
bill that led to the law, is pushing to scale it back. He says he
never intended it to apply to applicants with prior convictions --
only to students convicted of a drug offense while they were receiving
federal aid.

"The last thing I want to do is reach back and punish" applicants with
prior records, Rep. Souder says. "That's like saying, 'Once a
criminal, always a criminal.' "

But supporters of the law, like Robert Maginnis, vice president of the
Family Research Council, a conservative Washington think tank, argue
that the limited pool of federal financial aid funds -- totalling $48
billion in grants and loans -- should be reserved for law-abiding
students. "It's a privilege to receive financial aid. If you want
taxpayer money, you have to abide by the rules, which includes staying
drug-free," says Mr. Maginnis. He favors restricting financial aid for
other criminals as well, but says it's particularly crucial to deny
assistance to drug offenders, contending that abuse of drugs underlies
at least half of all crime in the U.S. yet universities take the issue
lightly.

In college newspapers, campus activists have portrayed the law as an
attack on otherwise upstanding college students who use marijuana
recreationally. There is also another segment of affected applicants:
hard-core substance abusers or dealers, many of them minorities, who
are seeking to redeem themselves through education. For these
offenders, mainly looking to attend community colleges and trade
schools, the ban reinforces other roadblocks they encounter in housing
and employment.

"If you can't get education or housing or certain types of jobs, you
hang with people who have a similar kind of restricted life," says
Phillip Clay, a professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. "It's stupid to have a law that says you can
rob a bank, serve five years, and live happily ever after, but if
you're caught with a joint or a vial of some stronger drug you're
barred from the benefits of society, especially those that can reduce
recidivism."

At the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, Mass., there are
nine students in Prof. James Carvallo's English composition class,
including two child molesters, a thief, and several people convicted
of assault. Another inmate, Timothy Grant, is eager to join the class,
which is offered under a program run by nearby Springfield Technical
Community College. His high-school equivalency degree satisfies the
admission standards, and prison staffers say he is a prime candidate
for rehabilitation via education.

But Mr. Grant is serving time for dealing crack, so he can't enroll
because he can't get the federal financial assistance he needs to pay
the $247 tuition. Most of the other students in the class are
receiving federal aid.

Mr. Grant, 26 years old, is serving a two-year sentence. He says he
has been dealing crack on street corners in the nearby city of
Springfield since he was 14. He's been arrested twice before. In a
previous incarceration at the prison from 1995 to 1997, before the law
was passed, Mr. Grant earned his equivalency degree and received
financial aid to take community-college courses. His grades were average.

After his release, he moved to his native Alabama and worked as a
welder. He stayed two years -- until a cousin visiting from
Massachusetts persuaded him to come back and sell crack again. "I was
feeling stressed living paycheck to paycheck," he says. "It was kind
of hard." Six weeks later, he was arrested again.

Since he has been convicted three times of dealing, Mr. Grant faces a
lifetime ban on federal aid. But offenders can restore eligibility by
completing a treatment program and passing random drug tests. So Mr.
Grant, who insists that even though he sold crack he never used the
drug himself, is nonetheless participating in drug treatment at the
prison so he can qualify for financial aid. The prison program is free
to him, but offenders who have already served time often find outside
treatment programs expensive and hard to get into because they have
long waiting lists.

Assuming he finishes the treatment program, Mr. Grant says he intends
to pursue his college studies in prison and after his release next year.
With a degree, he says, he could find a decent job, make his two
children proud and avoid the fate of other dealers he knows who were
killed. "I want to do something with my life and be something besides
a wannabe gangster," he says.

Though the classes he took during his previous prison term didn't keep
him from returning to jail, a prison official insists that education
could yet be Mr. Grant's salvation. "I hold out more hope that he'll
make it the next time. It can take a few times," says Lisa Ouimet
Burke, the prison's education coordinator. A recent study by Ms. Burke
found that inmates who took college courses in the Hampden prison were
half as likely to return within three years of release as were other
inmates with high-school diplomas.

Kristopher Sperry also tried to restore his eligibility by enrolling
in a treatment program. After Arkansas State determined that his two
convictions disqualified him for aid until this fall, he dropped out
and took a job washing cars. He made an appointment to check into a
state-funded drug treatment clinic nearby.

But when he told his manager that he needed a month's leave for drug
treatment, the boss fired him, saying the company couldn't afford to
hold his job open. Discouraged, Mr. Sperry skipped the treatment
program. "I was afraid, if I did go to rehab, I would miss my little
girl's first steps," he says. He says he now smokes marijuana only
occasionally and hopes his newfound religious faith will help him
finally beat the habit.

This month, Mr. Sperry and two others were arrested as a result of a
long-running undercover operation by the local sheriff's office and
charged with selling one ounce of marijuana for $170. The alleged
crime took place in February 2000, before his marriage and efforts to
reform. If convicted, Mr. Sperry would lose financial aid indefinitely. Mr.
Sperry said he intends to plead innocent.

The financial-aid ban is one of several federal measures enacted
during the past decade restricting drug offenders' access to
government benefits. A 1992 law prodded states -- on penalty of losing
highway-construction funds -- to pass legislation revoking drivers'
licenses of drug offenders for a minimum of six months. Seventeen of
them did. A 1996 federal law prohibits people convicted of drug
felonies from ever receiving welfare or food stamps. Since then, 27
states have modified or eliminated that ban.

Other federal legislation bars drug offenders from subsidized or
public housing for at least three years. Some local housing
authorities have extended that waiting period to five years.

In 1994, Congress eliminated the federal government's main student
grant program, Pell grants, for inmates in state and federal prisons, ending
higher education in most of those facilities. Ms. Burke, the Hampden
County prison's education coordinator, says that at least half a dozen
inmates there have declined transfers to lower-security state
facilities so they can keep taking college courses at the county jail.

Drug offenders who lie on the financial-aid form usually qualify for
aid because neither the government nor universities seek to verify
responses. "The Al Capone of drug dealers could answer no, and there
are no checks," says David Allen, financial-aid director at Bristol
Community College in Fall River, Mass. Ms. Kozberg, the Education
Department spokeswoman, says the government checks answers to all
questions on a sample of applications but doesn't pay special
attention to the drug responses.

Some college and university officials believe that the law will have
little impact on campus drug use. That's because colleges often prefer
to handle drug offenses in-house rather than turn them over to local
law-enforcement authorities. More than one-third of college students
report using marijuana within the past year, according to surveys.
Yet, of more than 1.5 million drug arrests in 1999, only 10,482
occurred on college campuses. Nearly twice as many on-campus drug
violations -- 18,466 -- were referred to university disciplinary boards.

In fact, the financial-aid ban could reduce campus arrests, since
colleges may be reluctant to forfeit the federally funded tuition
payments. Some off-campus law enforcement officials also appear
sympathetic to students' plight. In January, Dylan Rood, a 20-year-old
junior at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., was charged in his
hometown of Sierra Madre, Calif., with possessing less than an ounce
of marijuana. Mr. Rood, a geology major with a B-plus average and no
prior record, told police and prosecutors that he would have to quit
school if convicted because he would lose his student loans.

They agreed to drop the drug charge and let him plead guilty to
disturbing the peace. He paid a $135 fine but preserved his financial
aid.