BUSH TAKING SECOND LOOK AT DENIAL OF AID

Some Say Law That Prevents Drug Offenders From Getting College Money
Is Too Harsh

While his friends near college graduation, Adam Sabin pours coffee
full time at Starbucks.

He watches students shuffle off to class and brighter futures through
windows that look out across High Street to Ohio State University.
Meantime, he's stuck in a $7-an hour job that he tells himself is good
because it has benefits.

Sipping a cup of Zen tea, Sabin says it didn't have to be this
way.

"Right now I should be graduating from college and starting a future
with a good paying job."

Four years ago, as a high-school senior, he was denied financial aid
for college because of a drug conviction: a misdemeanor for marijuana
possession. With that rejection, he gave up on applying for college.

A 1998 federal law prohibits applicants with drug convictions from
receiving financial aid such as Pell grants and Stafford loans,
although federal officials - including President Bush and the
conservative Republican who wrote the law - now say it's too harsh.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education show 25,662 students from
the 2002-03 school year were denied aid because of a drug conviction.
The year before, 29,251 were, although others probably didn't bother
applying.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, who wrote the amendment to the 1965
Higher Education Act, is among those lobbying to change the law, said
his press secretary, Martin Green.

Green said the law was misinterpreted by the Clinton administration.
It was meant to bar only students who receive drug convictions while
in college - not high-school students or older adults trying to go
back to school.

"As an evangelical Christian, Mr. Souder has a very strong belief in
repentance, and this goes against everything he stands for," Green
said.

President Bush also has voiced concern. In his 2005 budget request, he
has proposed to narrow the law so it would apply only to students.

Musical by nature, Sabin plays more than a dozen instruments, and in
high school dreamed of attending Berklee College of Music in Boston.
At the time, it cost about $30,000 a year for tuition and expenses.

He applied for aid as a high school senior, checking the box
indicating he had a drug conviction. When the form came back, it said
he was denied.

Sabin says he couldn't afford college, nor could his family. So
without a chance of federal aid, he didn't apply. Even a scholarship
wouldn't help: "I still knew that books and the cost of living were
too much to take care of," he said.

His drug charge occurred on prom night. Sabin was at a party, smoking
pot outside with three friends in his hometown of Springboro, when a
police officer pulled up and issued tickets. On May 7, he pleaded
guilty to drug possession in a Warren County court. He was fined $100
and his driver's license was suspended for six months.

Souder's amendment specifies that ineligibility for federal aid lasts
for one year after a possession conviction.

Sabin didn't know that. It wasn't on the federal financial aid
form.

Short on prospects and finished with high school, he started selling
drugs in his hometown while his friends went off to college. He never
was busted for dealing.

Eventually, though, he thought he was going nowhere, so he quit
selling drugs and moved to Columbus for a fresh start. Though he's not
a student, he sometimes sits in on lecture classes at OSU.

"They're so big, nobody knows who's there," he said.