ANTI-DRUG LAW BACKFIRES

When Congress passed a law four years ago taking federal financial
aid away from college students who had been convicted of drug crimes,
it was hailed as a miracle cure. "The best thing we can do for
education is to get somebody clean and then get them back into
school," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., the law's chief sponsor.

Not a bad goal. But the supposed benefits haven't materialized.

Instead, the law has sparked countermeasures at several universities
and protests on more than 80 campuses by students who are seeing
other results.

Among the most problematic:

* While the most trivial drug offenses can cost students their chance
for a college education, students who commit rape, robbery and murder
face no such outcome. So the sponsors' stated goal of showing that
actions have consequences is scoffed at.

* By withholding federal financial aid, the program hurts low-income
students with drug convictions who can't afford to attend college
without aid. Wealthier students with similar convictions are not
penalized if they don't depend on federal financial aid.

* By refusing aid to students who have already been punished for drug
crimes, the law "undermines the process" in which colleges offer
students a fresh start, says Hampshire College President Gregory
Prince Jr.

After the Bush administration began aggressively enforcing the law,
which had been largely ignored, more than 15,000 students with drug
records lost financial aid for all or part of this year. Another
10,000 who failed to answer a question on government loan
applications about whether they had a drug conviction also were
denied aid. The vast majority of the students penalized have family
incomes of $30,000 or less.

To counteract the lost aid, Yale decided this month to make up the
dollars while a student undergoes a rehabilitation program that can
reopen the door to federal aid. A handful of other schools have set
up similar scholarship or loan programs. Hampshire, for example, has
a loan fund of $10,000 available to students hurt by the drug law.
Meanwhile, student governments, from George Washington University in
the nation's capital to the Berkeley in the West, have passed
resolutions denouncing the law.

But such efforts don't touch the vast majority of students at the
nation's 7,000 colleges. Students who attend schools that can't or
won't compensate for this faulty federal statute miss out on the
college education the federal aid programs were designed to provide
to the neediest students.

The law's supporters argue that if aid goes to a student with a drug
record, less money is left for law-abiding students. Their reasoning
is a stretch. The aid is from an "entitlement program," and no
student eligible based on family income is turned away.

Even Souder recognizes its problems and favors amending it so that it
applies only to students already in college when they commit a drug
offense.

Better to get rid of the law altogether. Otherwise, college students
are taught a damaging lesson: that low-income students must pay twice
for their crimes.