Youthful drug convictions spell trouble in college aid
By Gabrielle Russon
It's a crime that Marisa Garcia said she's being punished for twice.
Seven years ago, police found a pipe with marijuana residue in her car. "I went to the court, pled guilty and figured I'd pay my fine and that would be done," said Garcia, who was then a freshman at California State University at Fullerton.
Instead her financial aid form was returned, and Garcia, hailing from a single-parent household, was stripped of her federal funding because of the drug conviction. To keep Garcia in school, her mother refinanced their family home and charged her textbooks on a credit card.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) sought passage this week of an amendment to the Higher Education Act that would allow college students with drug convictions to keep their financial aid. But it was later withdrawn because of funding issues, said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee.
"At the beginning of the Democratic Congress, we adopted pay-go rules that require that all new spending obligations be offset. We are committed to fiscal discipline, and we take these budget rules extremely seriously. Rep. Scott was right to raise this important issue, but there was no offset for the cost of his amendment," Miller said.
Had the amendment passed, the question on the federal financial aid application form inquiring whether the student seeking a scholarship has ever been convicted of a drug offense would have become irrelevant.
"It's not fair," Scott said recently. "You don't have this prohibition for people convicted of rape, armed robbery, child pornography, drunk driving. You just get caught with a little bit of pot, you lose your college education."
But some lawmakers argue that the law should not be changed, that students with drug convictions are undeserving of tax dollars to subsidize their education.
"I believe that students who are dealing or abusing drugs probably aren't making the most of their educations," Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) said in a statement, opposing the amendment. "It's one thing if they are going to do it with their own money…but it's something else to ask the American taxpayer to fund this kind of behavior."
Martin Green, Souder's spokesman, said the current law is forgiving for those with drug convictions. If students are convicted for possession, they're ineligible for financial aid for one year; for dealing, it's two years. Completing a drug rehabilitation program with two drug tests shopwing no drug use also reinstates funding, Green said.
Currently, the law only affects students who have been convicted of drug offenses while enrolled in a university. High school seniors with drug convictions who haven't enrolled in college yet can still seek financial aid.
Some are seeking to end the drug conviction-scholarship link because they say it unfairly targets students from low-income families. Without financial aid, many fall back into a habitual cycle of crime because they can't afford a college degree, Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said recently.
"They've paid their debit to society," Shelton said. "They're back on America's streets, indeed, they should be giving the opportunity to get a college education.
"Those Americans that are able to get a college education are much less likely to get in trouble again, which means we've cut the recidivism rate significantly," she said.
Almost 200,000 students have lost their financial aid because of the current law, said Tom Angell, a spokesman for Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a grassroots organization that lobbied on Capitol Hill last month.
"This is affecting people," said Garcia, now a college junior. "I'm one of the lucky ones. I didn't have to drop out of school."