NEW FINANCIAL AID POLICY AN INJUSTICE

Imagine a party at a local campsite to celebrate good SAT scores with your
high school friends.

A patrol car pulls up and you are busted for the 12 pack and a couple of
joints on the picnic table. You can kiss your plan to attend college that
fall goodbye thanks to the Higher Education Act passed last spring. (Can
you believe the name of the act?) Federal Financial Aid will be denied one
year for one offence, two years for two offenses and indefinitely for three
or more busts.

While the law itself is deplorable, I was especially ashamed of the support
expressed for it by UM staff in the Sept. 14 headline article in the
Kaimin. As a grateful recipient of Federal money for college, I certainly
understand why the Financial Aid and faculty members quoted in the article
may have been reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. Never the less,
the law is harmful and hypocritical.

What can we possibly gain by denying someone convicted of drug possession
or sales an education? In my opinion the pursuit of a degree demonstrates a
desire to become a contributing member of society. Would not drug dealing,
which often leads to incarceration, be an all-too-likely fate of those
rejected by the authorities? Which type of education is more cost effective
and beneficial, that received in educational or penal institutions?

The same people rejected by our government for smoking a joint at age 17
may well be on legally prescribed mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs. I
know students on Ritalin, Valium, Zoloft, Prozac, Prednisone and other mood
altering and potentially dangerous and addictive drugs. I would be
surprised in none of the UM staff quoted in the article has never tried
drugs classified as illegal. Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair
revealed that our government has traded drugs for hostages and guns to
further our foreign policy goals.

I expect that future generations will be able to look back on our war on
drugs and wonder how we could have avoided addressing the underlying
reasons for drug abuse for so long while financial empires directed our
national policies. A less optimistic prediction, articulated by writer and
consciousness explorer Aldus Huxley, is of law-abiding populace medicated
into submission by the corporate/Federal state.

The same Kaimin article also highlighted the misguided priorities of Campus
Security by its arrest of 64 students for drug violations last year, the
majority involving marijuana. Such a charge would put a degree out of reach
for me. Those students with means, such as those that George W. Bush
enjoyed, would be free to continue on. You don’t have to be in the School
of Law to see a discrimination suit here.

Like most people, I prefer to get high on life without the aid of mood
altering substances. Fighting injustice is a rush. Go for it.