STUDENTS URGE REPEAL OF LAW DENYING EDUCATION AID TO DRUG CONVICTS

PROVIDENCE - Some Brown University students joined others across the
country Thursday to protest a federal law denying college financial
aid to applicants convicted of drug offenses.

The Higher Education Act is up for reauthorization this year, and
both the House and Senate have proposed legislation loosening, but
not eliminating, the ban on federal aid for drug offenders.

Wearing graduation gowns and standing before cardboard jail bars, six
members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy handed out fliers and
urged passers-by on the Brown Campus to tell their senators and
representatives to vote against the ban.

"I think the kids who are hurt by this are the ones who really need a
college education to break out," said Ariel Werner, a freshman who
was supposed to represent a prisoner. "Instead of getting rid of drug
use, they push people who use them to the borders of society."

Less than one-half of one percent of students who applied for federal
financial aid during the academic years 2001-2002 and 2003-2004
reported a drug conviction that made them ineligible for aid,
according to a report by the General Accounting Office.

GAO researchers estimated that during those two academic years, the
law probably prevented between 17,000 and 20,000 prospective students
from receiving federal grants. The same study concluded that between
29,000 and 41,000 students were ineligible for federal student loans.

Matthew Palevsky, 20, said the ban disproportionately affected the
poor - a group, he said, not well represented on the Ivy League
campus. He said middle and upper-class students convicted of drug
crimes don't necessarily need federal financial aid to attend college.

"It's a political wedge issue that been raised in every political
campaign," he said.

Palevsky questioned why the ban only applied to drug addicts.

"You could have raped someone, killed someone and you still get
financial aid from our government," he said.

Asa Hutchinson, the former head of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, called for loosening the ban earlier this month.

A spokesman for Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican who
originally sponsored the amendment, also calls the current ban a mistake.

Souder's intent in filing the 1998 amendment was to halt financial
aid to students convicted of a drug offense while still in college.

Souder blames the Clinton administration for interpreting the law too
broadly, said spokesman Martin Green.

"He's been fighting since then to have it changed," Green said.