Pubdate: Tue, 27 Jun 2000
Source: The Daily Texan
Contact:  http://stumedia.tsp.utexas.edu/webtexan/
Author: Garrick Pursley
Note: The Daily Texan is the University of Texas student newspaper
Bookmark: additional articles on Texas are available at 
http://www.mapinc.org/states/tx.htm

THE WAR ON DRUGS' NEW WEAPON

Beginning July 1, changes to the Federal Higher Education Act will take 
effect, altering the process by which students apply for financial aid. 
Initially passed in 1998, the act contains a provision that makes a clean 
drug record a condition for granting financial aid. Previously, the 
question about drug convictions on the Free Application for Federal Student 
Aid (FAFSA) form was optional. Now, under the new law, a response is mandatory.

Students with a single conviction for a drug related offense are subject to 
having their aid suspended for one year. The second offense results in a 
two-year suspension of aid, and the third conviction causes aid to be 
suspended indefinitely.

What does Congress hope to accomplish with this regulation? The ostensible 
answer would seem to be that the potential denial of financial aid would 
serve as a deterrent to college students contemplating experimenting with 
drugs. Realistically speaking, however, it is more likely that the new 
regulation will simply encourage dishonesty among applicants.

Students on 25 college campuses, along with the NAACP, have moved in 
protest of the new law, claiming that it is unfair, and demanding 
congressional repeal.

This newest outgrowth of the hideously unsuccessful "War on Drugs" campaign 
is nothing more than another piecemeal solution to a problem that seems to 
pervade society to its deepest levels. Predicated on the "carrot and stick" 
deterrence ideology, Congress hopes to transform eligibility for financial 
aid from an American right into a prize to be awarded to those displaying 
desirable behavior profiles. Noble ambitions aside, however, it must be 
noted that the law is, by its nature, inherently discriminatory.

Targeting a minority of college students, the financially disadvantaged, 
reveals the presupposition, carried by the discourse of the law and its 
enforcement, that poverty is synonymous with criminality. Is this really a 
tenable assumption? It is impossible to know what percentage of those 
students who do not need financial aid have been convicted of drug 
offenses, because there is no such question on the general university 
application for admission.

The unevenness of the new law places those students who rely on financial 
aid at a disadvantage, proclaiming their proclivity to "socially deviant" 
behavior on the basis of their economic background. This sort of 
stigmatization seems equivocal to a sort of "class profiling," placing 
individuals into a category with a set of presumed characteristics 
requiring closer scrutiny and greater governmental regulation. Such 
"profiling" has been found discriminatory with respect to race, and there 
appears to be a direct parallel with the discrimination that will probably 
occur under the new law.

Additionally, the law is fundamentally unenforceable. Students wishing to 
protect their financial aid eligibility will lie on their applications. How 
can the already overtaxed resources of university financial aid offices be 
expected to verify the criminal record of each and every applicant? Will 
such offices learn to rely on FBI-like background checks to ensure that no 
drug offender receives federal money? What would that procedure cost?

Legislation of this kind, intended to further a societal goal at the 
expense of reducing individual liberties, might work in the case of 
affirmative action. The higher education act, however, seems incapable of 
achieving its lofty goal of purifying college campuses. If the impetus 
behind Congress' action is to reduce drug use among college students, 
targeting the few while ignoring the debauchery of the many is the wrong 
way to go about it. No wonder people are protesting.

Congress has a historically established predilection to occasionally 
attempt to legislate morality. Prohibition, abortion proscription, and 
similar laws have always sparked protest from segments of the population 
and have almost always failed to accomplish what was intended. What place 
is there for punitive anti-drug regulations in higher education? Aren't the 
penalties incurred from a drug conviction serious enough?

The message that the government seems to be transmitting with this new law 
is different from that of the "War on Drugs" generally. No longer are those 
who use drugs merely uneducated. Now they are unfit to be educated. Why 
not, in the interest of fairness, just require every college applicant to 
answer the drug conviction question prior to admission, and then bar those 
with drug records from attending college at all? The effect would be the 
same, only not so discriminatory.
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