LAW DOES LITTLE TO PREVENT CAMPUS DRUG USE

Daily Staff Writer October 11, 2005 A law preventing drug offenders
from receiving financial aid from the federal government is not
benefiting society, according to a student advocacy group.

The group, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, was reacting to a study
by the Government Accountability Office released Sept. 26.

The GAO study found that tens of thousands of Free Application for
Federal Student Aid applicants were denied postsecondary education
benefits in 2004 because of the drug provision, although that number
only makes up 0.3 percent of all applicants that year.

"The reason why you haven't been able to get much of a reaction about
someone supporting the drug provision is that there aren't many
people supporting it," said Erik Cooke, legislative director of
Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

The drug law, enacted in 1998, says that if a student is convicted of
a drug offense, he or she is ineligible to receive financial aid from
one to an indefinite number of years unless the student completes a
drug rehabilitation program.

Wiggsy Sivertsen, director of counseling services at San Jose State
University, said the amendment has done little to reduce illegal drug
activity on college campuses.

Sivertsen said a lot of students who get counseling through SJSU
smoke marijuana fairly regularly.

"If you were able to take a pulse of the campus, you'd see meth use
spike during finals time," Sivertsen said. "There's a lot more drug
use on this campus than we see in this office, for sure."

According to the Students for Sensible Drug Policy release, the drug
provision also damages the American economy. Sivertsen said she agrees.

"If you deny education to individuals, and they do deny them
education if they can't get loans," Sivertsen said, "then what you're
doing is you're diminishing the productive output and intellectual
understanding of tomorrow's citizen's."

Ha Luu, programmer analyst of the financial aid and scholarship
office at SJSU, said out of the 15,000 to 17,000 financial aid
applicants at the university, very few students are affected by the
drug provision.

"This question has been on the FAFSA for the last, maybe, three
years, and I don't think we ever denied (anyone)," Luu said, "Maybe
one student out of three years. One or two."

The question on the application asks students whether or not they
have been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs. If they
answer yes, they are sent a worksheet and, depending on when they
were convicted, are either denied aid or their applications go
through further processing.

Students that have been convicted could probably get away with lying
on the form, Luu said.

"They can just say no and we can't really cross-check with the
database," Luu said. "But most of the time I think the students are
pretty honest about it."

The FAFSA application reads the penalty for lying on the form might
be a $20,000 fine, time in prison or both.

The Removing Impediments to Student Education Act, or the RISE Act, a
bill currently in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce,
aims to repeal the drug provision of the Higher Education Act. Cooke
said a similar bill was presented to the 108th Congress, but did not pass.

He said it's likely the current bill will not pass either.

"It's just one lone, well-positioned congressman who's able to keep
it on the books," Cooke said. "The tide is definitely against the
drug provision. It's only a matter of time before reason prevails in congress."

The bill was authored by Rep. Barney Frank and was endorsed by 69
cosponsors, all representing the Democratic Party, including Rep. Zoe
Lofgren of the 16th District of California, which includes San Jose.