STUDENTS WITH DRUG CONVICTIONS COULD SOON HAVE KINDER FINANCIAL FATE

College students with drug convictions face financial aid
restrictions under a current education act that will be up for
revision this summer by Congress.

The Department of Education reported that approximately 198,000
college students around the country have been denied financial aid
because they checked "YES" for the question on the FAFSA: Have you
been convicted for the possession or sale of illegal drugs for an
offense that occurred while you were receiving federal student aid?

Although there has not been an official school-run scholarship
available to students who have had drug convictions at CSUN, there
have been private scholarships provided in the past aimed
specifically at alleviating the costs of their education. Perry
Ellis America, a clothing company, provided the most
recent scholarship of this nature to CSUN students, but was
no longer offered in 2005.

Jannaee Brummell, CSUN's scholarship coordinator, said an
organization discontinuing a scholarship is a common occurrence.
Committees within these organizations of business are formed to
decide whether they should continue providing the scholarship. No
one at Perry Ellis America was available for comment.

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a grassroots student
organization based in Washington D.C., has been fighting the policy
stated in the act that restricts students with drug convictions from
attaining financial aid for a minimum of two years if they are not
involved in a narcotics treatment program.

"The aid elimination penalty (for students with drug convictions) is
supposed to reduce substance abuse, but it actually causes more
problems by blocking access to education," said Kris Krane,
executive director of the SSDP.

The SSDP has chapters on college campuses that become involved with
students, advocating for them to contact Congress, and demand
resolutions to drug policies they feel inhibit learning. There are
approximately 250 chapters of the SSDP throughout the country.

Campuses have worked with the SSDP to take action to provide money
for students who have been barred from financial aid by the revised
Higher Education Act. Since 1998, Yale University, Amherst College,
Swarthmore College and Western Washington University have provided
scholarships to students on their campuses with drug convictions.
Last month, University of California, Berkeley became the fifth
school to have their student government approve this kind of scholarship.

"The student government is doing what is necessary to provide the
means to an education for students in need," said David Israel, a
senator on UC Berkeley's student government who sponsored the bill
that created the scholarship, in a prepared statement.

While CSUN does not have a SSDP chapter on campus, Associated
Students General Manager David Crandall said it would not be outside
of the realm of possibility for A.S. to consider a scholarship for
students with drug convictions, though no one has proposed the idea
yet. The Matador Involvement Center, the institution in charge of the
clubs and organizations on campus, has no record of anyone trying to
start a SSDP chapter on campus.

The Higher Education Act was supposed to be revisited by Congress
within five to seven years of its original approval in 1998. Nine
years have passed since the penalty to drug convicted college
students was added to the act, something that Krane said he hopes
will change when Congress reviews the Higher Education Act later this
summer. With the current leadership in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate, Krane said that the SSDP is
optimistic that these counterproductive policies will not stand in
the way of the pursuit of education after Congress revisits the act.