DENIAL OF COLLEGE AID TO DRUG OFFENDERS DECRIED

The 108th Congress adjourned yesterday, likely slamming the door on
financial aid for as many as 26,967 of the neediest college students this
school year.

Angel Mateo, 23, a sophomore at UMass-Dartmouth, could have been one of them.

Mateo, a Brighton High School dropout, was convicted twice for marijuana
possession - in 2000 after partying in Cambridge's JFK Park, and in 2002
after carrying "maybe enough to fill a bowl" in his pocket while boarding a
bus in Brighton.

That Mateo was ordered to a court-mandated drug treatment program might
have been his luckiest break.

Under a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, students convicted of
drug offenses are banned from receiving federal aid for at least one year,
depending on the offense.

"Drugs are treated more seriously than murder or aggravated assault," said
Rep. Barney Frank [related, bio] (D-Mass.), who's introduced a bill every
year since 1999 to strike the law.

But if applicants complete an approved rehab program, their eligibil-ity is
restored. "One reason I waited so long to come to school was I thought I
wasn't going to get any money, so why even bother to try," said Mateo, who
this year got more than $12,000 in grants and loans.

Opponents of the provision say Congress has had plenty of opportunity to
change things. In addition to Frank's bill, four amendments came before
legislators this year, most of them proposed by the provision's original
author, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.). Souder's fix would not eliminate the ban
but restrict it to students convicted while already receiving aid - his
original intent, he said.

But none of the measures even made it to legislative markup, let alone
approval. The last chance for reform likely came and went Thursday, when
the bill reauthorizing the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which
contains the Souder amendment, was again pushed off the Senate Judiciary
Committee agenda.

"It's an outrage," said Ross Wilson, legislative director of the nonprofit
Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Wilson said 157,521 students have been
denied aid, based on data from the Department of Education. "Congress has
been promising us for a long time that they'd make the reform."

Religious to criminal-justice groups cite discrimination and contributions
to recidivism among the reasons they oppose the law.

"It should be done away with, not just for moral reasons, but also because
it's unenforceable," said Julie Poorman, Berklee College of Music financial
aid director. There's no matchable database for students convicted of drug
offenses, she said, as there is for, say, U.S. citizenship. "The student
who's honest gets punished. The one who lies and never gets caught is never
penalized."