PAST DRUG OFFENSES DENY MANY COLLEGE AID

Some Want to Rewrite Law That Hurts Students Rebuilding Their Lives

NEW YORK - She was thrown out of the house at 13 for declaring herself a
lesbian and spent her teen years sleeping on subway trains, yet Laura
Melendez still managed to get her GED.

Sure, there had been a few arrests for marijuana, but after an entire
adolescence spent on the streets, what would those offenses really amount to?

"It means I'll be denied an education," said Melendez, who is from the
Bronx, now 22 and applying to college.

If Melendez had been an armed robber, a rapist, even a murderer, she would
not be in the same predicament. Once out of prison, she would have been
entitled to government grants and loans, no questions asked.

But under a contentious provision of federal law, tens of thousands of
would-be college students have been denied financial aid because of drug
offenses, even though the crimes may have been committed long ago and the
sentences already served out.

"It is absurd on the face of it," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind.

Souder, who wrote the law, says the Clinton and Bush administrations have
both turned it on its head, taking a penalty meant to discourage current
students from experimenting with drugs and using it to punish people trying
to get their lives back on track.

"I am an evangelic Christian who believes in repentance, so why would I
have supported that?" he said. "Why would any of us in Congress?"

The aid prohibition has been a sore point since its enactment in 1998.
Members of Congress have accused the Clinton and Bush administrations of
distorting the law's intent.

The Education Department has fired back, saying Congress handed it a vague
and sloppy law -- one referring simply to "a student who has been
convicted" of a drug offense -- that the department is faithfully enforcing.

Students are equally perplexed. After serving almost 10 years in prison for
attempted murder, Jason Bell went straight to college on federal grants and
loans. Now a senior at San Francisco State University, he helps other
ex-convicts enroll in the university, but often has a hard time assisting
drug offenders whose crimes were minor.

"It's a form of double jeopardy," said Bell, 32. "They do the time, but
then there are still roadblocks when they finish. I don't believe people
should be punished twice."

Some members of Congress say they are pushing to rewrite the law for
precisely that reason. For the first time since the prohibition took
effect, the president's budget includes a commitment to revise it -- not to
throw it out, but to narrow its scope so that students like Melendez get a
second chance.

"It would really take a lot off my mind," she said. "I need to go to
school. I can't just leave it like this."

Yet the changes would perpetuate what some members of Congress see as the
law's contradictions. Under President Bush's language, anyone who violated
drug laws before going to college could get financial aid, regardless of
the offense. That would be in keeping with Bush's philosophy, as laid out
in his State of the Union address, that "when the gates of the prison open,
the path ahead should lead to a better life."

But those already in college when they commit a drug offense, however
small, would still be stripped of aid for at least a year. The idea,
supporters say, is to continue trying to dissuade students from using
drugs, especially since they are being educated with taxpayer money.

The problem, detractors say, is that the law would still impose stiffer
penalties on drug use than on any other crime.

"We should abolish the whole rule," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. "Not
that we should encourage drug use, but you shouldn't single that out as
being worse than rape or arson or armed robbery."

Souder says the aid prohibition was never meant to punish people for bad
choices they made long ago. Students who have been denied aid because of
offenses committed before they were in college, he said, should consider
their options.

"I know as a conservative I'm not supposed to say this," he said, "but
there are lawsuits to be had here."