SSDP MOBILIZES AGAINST HIGHER EDUCATION ACT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Students might expect smoking marijuana to make them a
little red-eyed or necessitate a late night excursion to Josiah's. What
students might not know, however, is that lighting up a joint can also
lead to something more ominous -- the loss of federal financial aid.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a national organization with a Brown
University chapter that was founded in 2003, has been working to promote
awareness about the drug provision of the Higher Education Act. The act
was passed in 1965 to provide federal financial aid to low-income
students, and the provision was added when the act was renewed in 1998.
The provision prevents students who have been convicted of drug charges
from receiving any federal financial aid.

If a Brown student were to lose federal financial aid, the Office of
Financial Aid would not compensate students for lost federal funds, said
Susan Farnum, interim director of financial aid. But Farnum said the drug
provision has not yet affected potential financial aid applicants.

"It hasn't been a situation that we've encountered yet," Farnum said.

SSDP has worked on reforming the act in the past. In order to raise
awareness about the drug provision, SSDP has organized demonstrations on
the Main Green and lobbied local politicians to oppose the provision. A
recent piece of legislation proposed by District 12 State Rep. Joseph
Almeida, a Democrat, has called for Rhode Island to separate state aid
from federal financial aid.

"If you don't have the money to go to college and you are caught with
drugs, instead of providing you with an education, (the provision)
demonizes people who have taken a drug even though that's 50 percent of
America," said Matt Palevsky '07, a former vice president of SSDP.
Palevsky added that approximately 150,000 students nationwide have been
disqualified from financial aid because of prior drug convictions.

Palevsky claimed the provision unfairly targets low-income and minority
students because they are statistically more likely to be arrested for
drug charges. As a result, students who most need federal financial aid
face the greatest obstacles in attaining it, he said.

"(Former American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Ira Glasser)
has said that the movement to reform drug policy is the new civil rights
movement," Palevsky said. "It disproportionately affects poor people,
people of color, people in cities."

SSDP members also argue the drug provision takes opportunities away from
people who might be trying to break a drug habit.

"People who have drug problems, who want to get out of that life, are not
given the chance to do that," said Nureen Ghuznavi '08, also a former vice
president of SSDP.

The law also does not deter students from using drugs, members of SSDP
said, because the drug provision is not well publicized. Even most Brown
students are not aware of how many people are affected by the drug
provision, they said.

Some progress has been made recently in reforming the drug provision of
the Higher Education Act, Ghuznavi said. Last spring, Congress amended the
bill limiting the provision to drug offenses committed during college.

The organization has recently focused on other drug policy issues,
according to its members. Two major issues for this semester are medical
marijuana and voting rights for incarcerated felons. Still, the drug
provision remains a concern for SSDP.

"The war on drugs isn't going to help our drug problem -- it is
discriminatory against people of color and people of low income," Ghuznavi
said.