Here’s a warning to students, especially those in the low-income bracket: Don’t make a single mistake with drugs — don’t get busted — or your federal financial aid can be withheld. Never mind that college is a place of experimentation; university life is, for many students, the first step outside the family home and many teenagers’ first experience with freedom. Never mind that a single mistake with drugs doesn’t, in reality, ruin one’s entire future.
This is the lesson Congress sent to the youth of America on Oct. 7, 1998: Despite the prevalence of drugs (both legal and illegal) in society, you may not make one mistake. Do it and we’ll deny you the chance to better your life.
So in the past year, college students have responded. At first the policy wasn’t enforced with any amount of regularity. For the 2000-2001 school year, however, more than 8,000 students out of nearly 8.5 million applying had their eligibility for financial aid reduced or eliminated. In the face of this enforcement, college campuses have been abuzz with the issue.
More than 90 campuses are now affiliated with Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a national group started in 1998 at Rochester Institute of Technology, which is “committed to providing education on harms caused by the War on Drugs, working to involve youth in the political process, and promoting an open, honest, and rational discussion of alternative solutions to our nation’s drug problems,” according to the group’s Web site. ASUO President Jay Breslow is currently working to have the Student Senate adopt a resolution supporting the SSDP’s efforts to have Congress repeal the drug-conviction section of the Higher Education Act.
The Emerald editorial board applauds SSDP’s mission and the ASUO’s move to support that mission. Withholding education and denying a second chance to drug users will do nothing to fix the problem. Those attracted to drugs need to be shown that there are other things in life that also provide pleasure and that ultimately provide a much deeper sense of satisfaction.
One of the purported purposes of higher education is to expose youth to a wide world of experience and opportunity. Seeing that there are important issues to think about and fulfilling work to be done in the world can go a long way to combating the allure of drugs such as cocaine and heroin. The government’s current policies of complete denial don’t wash with youth, because one experience with cocaine provides a huge rush of pleasure and the urge for more.
Maybe a college education isn’t enough to reduce demand for drugs, but denying federal funds to a 19-year-old for a slip-up (possibly due to peer pressure or a seemingly harmless sample at a party) will only make the situation worse. Such a student, forced to leave college, may see further drug use as the best option. What are his or her choices? Is flipping burgers really a more satisfying solution?
To make the situation worse, the effect of this policy is to penalize low-income and minority students, and those who tell the truth, for drug use. Not all students will be denied a college education. Only those applying for federal funds lose out. Rich kids can rack up the drug convictions and still go to college. And minority youth make up a disproportionate number of drug arrests. That may be due to racial profiling and discriminatory sentencing, or it may not, but the effect is still the same.
Truthful students get penalized as well, because the infamous “Question 35” is answered by the student. The federal financial aid authorities can’t possibly check the records of 9 million students. If drug convictions are discovered later, the money is forfeited, but it’s pretty much the honor system.
One final nail shuts the coffin of this unfair policy: Drug convictions are the only crime considered. The government is saying that a rapist or a murderer deserves federal money and a second chance, but a student who smokes a joint doesn’t. And according to Rolling Stone magazine, the federal government requires no such disclosures about drug convictions from business owners when awarding grants or subsidies. The insanity of those discrepancies is clear all by itself.
SSDP’s ultimate goal may be to end the country’s war on drugs, and that may be a smart move. But we are excited by the group’s efforts to end the government’s war on low-income youth who are seeking to make their lives better. The ASUO gets kudos for bringing the issue up. Now if someone could just submit the resolution to the Senate rules committee for approval, the effort can begin here.