TOUGHER BUSH STANCE ON OBSCURE LAW HITS STUDENTS SEEKING FINANCIAL AID

Any Drug Conviction Bars Applicants From Getting Federal College Funds

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.