WAR ON DRUGS CAN HURT STUDENTS

More than 20 people gathered in the Butler Hall conference room at the
downtown YMCA last week for the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) public forum discussing the war on drugs.

The forum, the second in a four part series, was called "Double Penalty:
Barring Financial Aid and Education to Working Class Students."

Graham Boyd of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project and Cleveland State
University professors Edward McKinney and Dr. Michael Williams
facilitated the forum.

Boyd said that the war on drugs is inconsistent with the notion that
Americans can achieve success through higher education because "if you
want to get financial aid to go to college, you can murder somebody
and you're still eligible. You can rape somebody, kidnap somebody,
commit arson... but if you get caught violating the nation's drug
laws, then you aren't eligible for financial aid."

"Once you've served your time, you should be able to go about your
life," Boyd said. "But this aid elimination penalty [added to the
federal Higher Education Act in 2000] was enacted with a specific
punitive purpose."

Boyd called the policy a form of double jeopardy, adding that "once
you finish all the other penalties the judge might have imposed on
you, there's one more for you, and that's that you won't be able to
get a college education."

Boyd said his group is challenging the policy in court.

He also believes that drug laws are disproportionately aimed at black
and Hispanic youth, noting that 85 percent of those arrested for a
drug-related offense in Cleveland are African American. He decried as
wasteful the money spent by the federal government on what he said was
an ineffective advertising campaign against drugs.

"It doesn't change kids' behavior," Boyd said, but rather it sends the
message to parents to "be very afraid."

Dr. Michael Williams, director of CSU's Black Studies Program, also
spoke.

"I haven't seen the boats and planes that bring drugs into the
community," said Williams. "All I see is the end product where the
drugs land, and who gets penalized for using drugs."

Williams said that the targeting of poor minorities in the drug war
contributes to a cycle of crime and poverty in the community.

He also likened the situation to terrorism, saying that residents in
the inner city experience elements of terrorism on a daily basis.

"We talk about weapons of mass destruction. A school system where 50
percent of the kids do not graduate, that is a weapon of mass
destruction," he said.

Williams talked about the role of Cleveland State, saying that it was
first founded as an institution for getting urbanites into the job
market, but that many can't get in if they have or once had a drug
problem.

"We [CSU] want to be 'Harvard on the Lake', we want to be 'Kent State
North' or 'Case Western Jr.', but we don't want to be 'urban', because
'urban' implies black," he said.

Both Graham and Boyd feel that prisons play a counter productive role
in society, but the strongest words on that subject came from a man in
the audience, who said that in an "automated nation," people who are
not educated are not valued.

"They can't do shit with them," the man said. "They don't need you.
You are not producing a product. They don't have room for you in this
society, so off your ass goes [to prison], gone, because they don't
need you."

"We've elevated the youth in this country as the people that we need
to protect," said Boyd. "And yet it's in their name that we're locking
up hundreds of thousands of people...doing things that are
undemocratic, un-American, unconstitutional, in the name of the kids."

After the event, another gentleman from the audience voiced his
frustration.

"I know people in the system, and I know what they're doing to them,"
he said. "We got a choice. We can take some serious steps to derail
this train now, or we can sit around and wait, and end up with a
situation like they've got in Brazil."

The next two forums in the series will take place on May 17 and June 7
at 7 p.m. at the Downtown YMCA, 2200 Prospect Ave. You can learn more
about the ACLU by visiting acluohio. org.