TROUBL

In 1998, unbeknownst to the general public and even to most of Congress, Congressman Mark Gouder, a conservative republican from Indiana snuck an amendment into the federal Higher Education Act. His amendment, called the Aid Elimination Penalty (and known to many as the Drug-Free Student Loan Amendment), denied federal aid to aspiring college students with prior adult drug convictions. Designed to keep criminal drug offenders out of American institutions of higher education, the amendment has affected around 200,000 students over the ten years in which it has been in effect. The law has likely resulted in thousands of Americans never attending college or dropping.

Though amended in 2006, the act remains in an altered form. It now allows students with prior convictions to receive aid, but if convicted while attending school, their loans are immediately revoked. Students can regain their loans if they complete a rehabilitation or drug counseling program.

This is certainly a step in a fairer direction although there are still glaring errors in the logic behind it. While the idea sounds appealing to conservatives and Drug War supporters, it denies aid to some of the most at-risk students, further draining their already lowered chances to succeed in life. Moreover, it hurts students who are particularly hard-working and intelligent, because keeping their federal aid packages, students must keep a relatively high GPA. As Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), a grass roots campaign working to change the amendment, puts it: “Statistics and common sense tell us that it simply doesn’t make sense to pull students out of school if we want to reduce drug abuse and encourage young people to become successful citizens.” Rather than continuing with their educations and going on to get jobs, it seems likely that many of these former students end up doing more drugs and becoming repeat offenders or worse. If their downward spiral goes far enough, they may be imprisoned and become a burden on the American tax system, rather than the assets if their educations had continued.

Meanwhile, as non-violent drug offenders are losing their aid, burglars, arsonists, murderers and rapists are completely eligible to continue receiving it! Drug infractions are the only convictions covered by the amendment, so while a convicted rapist might get out of prison and get enough federal aid to go back to college, the talented artist or brilliant chemistry student who gets caught with a dime bag in his dorm room could be booted out of school.

Moreover, due to the nature of American race relations, the Aid Elimination Penalty is an inherently racist biased piece of legislation. Students from low-income families, who are often minority students, tend to use drugs more often, and racial profiling guarantees minority students are far more likely to be convicted on drug charges. According to SSDP, only 13% of American drugs users are African American, but they account for 67% of drug user convictions. The amendment’s one saving grace is that it allows students to regain their aid following rehab or counseling. But, most of the low-income students subject to losing their aid in the first place don’t have the money for these expensive programs. It is an established fact that minorities in America tend to have less access to higher education, and much effort has been put into providing them with equal chances in recent years, yet the Drug-Free Student Amendment seems poised to strike back at those gains.

Organizations like SSDP (and 250 others) are appealing the amendment’s validity but with little success so far. Many universities across the country are doing their part in keeping drug-convicted students in school. The University of California at Berkeley, Yale University, Swarthmore College, Hampshire College, and Western Washington University all have established school-funded scholarships for students who have lost financial aid from drug convictions. These are small measures, but they display solidarity with those of us who think this law ought to be thrown out with all possible speed.