ATTACK ON CAMPUS DRUG USE ENDS UP TEACHING KIDS TO LIE

By voting in 1998 to deny federal financial aid to college students
convicted of drug offenses, Congress hoped to convince kids that drug
crimes don't pay. As the law begins to take effect, though, the
message received is turning out to be quite different. Namely, that
honesty isn't the best policy.

And now, mounting concern over the law's fairness is causing a
backlash by students at 25 college campuses who want Congress to
reverse itself.

The problem? Beginning July 1, 3,700 college students are expected to
see their federal aid cut or delayed under a new law aimed at
punishing students, including incoming freshmen, convicted of any drug
offenses, even misdemeanors. Yet no one pretends that these students
are the only ones with criminal drug convictions. They're just the
only ones who admit it.

For another 300,000 college students who have refused to answer
questions about their criminal drug experiences, there will be no punishment.

Such uneven -- and unfair -- enforcement is a predictable consequence
of lawmakers' attempt to use federal financial aid to engineer student
behavior.

Unfairness pervades the program. By withholding federal financial aid,
the law targets only those kids who can't afford to pay full-price
tuition. Drug offenders with enough money to pay still can go to college.

In addition, the law applies only to students who have run afoul of
the law for drug crimes. Persons convicted of non-drug offenses --
murder, rape, burglary -- can continue to get federal financial aid,
if colleges choose to accept them.

What's more, the law punishes only those who are caught breaking drug
laws, pay their debt to society and then tell the truth about it.
Financial aid won't be withheld from students who didn't answer the
drug question on their aid application forms.

The Department of Education waved them in after college administrators
complained earlier this year that holding back the incomplete forms
would slow down the admissions process.

The law's implementation is unlikely to go smoothly. Students from
campuses ranging from the University of Texas at Austin to the
Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology are calling on Congress to
overturn it. So is the NAACP. They argue that the federal government
should make higher education more accessible to poor students, not
less so.

Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass., has gone a step further.
Students and administrators this spring set up a $12,000 fund that the
college will use to make loans to students denied aid.

Even Congress is belatedly recognizing the law's weaknesses. This
week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on amendments
to it. If passed by the Senate, they'll require that in 2001 the
Education Department deny aid to students who refuse to answer the
drug question. They'll also narrow the law, making it applicable only
to college students, not entering freshmen.

The changes won't solve the fundamentally discriminatory nature of the
law, which punishes an underprivileged group of students for crimes
they've already atoned for.

Better still would be a wholesale repeal. This law denies educational
opportunity, punishing a minority for the problem of drug use among
U.S. students.Today's debate: College drug use Only students who admit
convictions will lose financial aid.