Pubdate: Sat, 09 Oct 2004
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2004 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: Thea Singer
Cited: Students for Sensible Drug Policy http://www.ssdp.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Higher+Education+Act

DENIAL OF COLLEGE AID TO DRUG OFFENDERS DECRIED

The 108th Congress adjourned yesterday, likely slamming the door on 
financial aid for as many as 26,967 of the neediest college students this 
school year.

Angel Mateo, 23, a sophomore at UMass-Dartmouth, could have been one of them.

Mateo, a Brighton High School dropout, was convicted twice for marijuana 
possession - in 2000 after partying in Cambridge's JFK Park, and in 2002 
after carrying "maybe enough to fill a bowl" in his pocket while boarding a 
bus in Brighton.

That Mateo was ordered to a court-mandated drug treatment program might 
have been his luckiest break.

Under a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, students convicted of 
drug offenses are banned from receiving federal aid for at least one year, 
depending on the offense.

"Drugs are treated more seriously than murder or aggravated assault," said 
Rep. Barney Frank [related, bio] (D-Mass.), who's introduced a bill every 
year since 1999 to strike the law.

But if applicants complete an approved rehab program, their eligibil-ity is 
restored. "One reason I waited so long to come to school was I thought I 
wasn't going to get any money, so why even bother to try," said Mateo, who 
this year got more than $12,000 in grants and loans.

Opponents of the provision say Congress has had plenty of opportunity to 
change things. In addition to Frank's bill, four amendments came before 
legislators this year, most of them proposed by the provision's original 
author, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.). Souder's fix would not eliminate the ban 
but restrict it to students convicted while already receiving aid - his 
original intent, he said.

But none of the measures even made it to legislative markup, let alone 
approval. The last chance for reform likely came and went Thursday, when 
the bill reauthorizing the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which 
contains the Souder amendment, was again pushed off the Senate Judiciary 
Committee agenda.

"It's an outrage," said Ross Wilson, legislative director of the nonprofit 
Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Wilson said 157,521 students have been 
denied aid, based on data from the Department of Education. "Congress has 
been promising us for a long time that they'd make the reform."

Religious to criminal-justice groups cite discrimination and contributions 
to recidivism among the reasons they oppose the law.

"It should be done away with, not just for moral reasons, but also because 
it's unenforceable," said Julie Poorman, Berklee College of Music financial 
aid director. There's no matchable database for students convicted of drug 
offenses, she said, as there is for, say, U.S. citizenship. "The student 
who's honest gets punished. The one who lies and never gets caught is never 
penalized." 
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