SECOND CHANCES SHOULDN'T COME BEFORE FIRST

Our View: Congress' lift on the financial aid ban for prospective
students convicted of drug offenses comes at a time when students who
have kept their noses clean can barely get in.

Second chances in life are important.

At a point in each of our lives, we are going to hope that someone
will turn a blind eye to what we have done or look past it to see how
we have worked hard to rehabilitate ourselves.

We all make bad decisions and have had our personal demons in life.

Turning away from those destructive forces to say, "I'm going to make
something out of my life," is the first and most important step of
the rest of each person's life who may not be on the right path.

However, Congress' lifting of the financial aid ban for students with
drug convictions comes at a poor time.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, should have considered that the
lifting of the ban would be around the same time as billions of
dollars are cut from the financial aid budget.

Good timing!

This cut, on top of adding more students to the pool looking for
financial aid, will make the competition for the remaining money even
more fierce than it already is.

Students from all backgrounds who have worked and kept clean compete
for the money so they can get a chance to go to college.

They have made the right decisions and should be rewarded before
others who have possibly sold or used drugs in the past, at least for
right now.

With a better financial aid system in place that analyzes each person
on a one-by-one basis, perhaps the most deserving students, drug
convictions or not, could earn their place in college.

As it stands now, a student from a middle-class background whose
parents may have a comfortable income, but has to pay their way
through life is denied financial aid because of their parents' income.

A student whose parents have had to scrape together every last penny
and who has beaten the odds fails to pass through the financial aid
system, because of a lack of government funds.

A couple of the many flaws in the system.

It is sad that in the country with the greatest universities, we have
to put such foolish and superficial requisites on our selection for
who can go to college and who cannot.

Everybody deserves a second chance, but people who have worked hard
their entire life and kept themselves clean should perhaps be given a
first chance first.