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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
A handful of the private institutions have used their freedom to defy the provision by reimbursing students who have lost their aid, or offering them special scholarships. Last year, three private universities, Hampshire, Swarthmore and Western Washington University, took this action. In April, Yale University, where students have protested the law, joined in. Although no students at Yale have ever lost aid because of the drug provision, any who do in the future will be reimbursed by Yale's private scholarship funds. (The student does have to agree to participate in a drug rehab program, however).
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy is careful not to condemn the law, pointing out that Yale historically has guaranteed all students the financial aid they require for their education, regardless of reason. Still, the provision's opponents are thrilled by Yale's action, and hope that if one private Ivy League school takes action, the rest will fall in line. Opponents of the law are further delighted by the symbolism in the defiance by Yale, alma mater of George W. Bush.
"Yale's decision is tremendously important for political reasons," says Boyd. "Because it is an elite institution, which many of our elected leaders actually attended, it sends the message that this is a law that is so fundamentally unfair that the universities are effectively opting out."
Still other universities have shown some interest in taking action against the measure. The Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) held a national conference about the provision last year, explaining how financial aid officers could reimburse students who lost their aid. Administrators from 50 colleges, including Yale, attended. The SSDP also has organized student action groups at more than 200 colleges around the nation, including strong chapters at Harvard and Wesleyan, to push their schools to follow Yale's lead.
Some schools, which have yet to lose a student due to the provision, appear to be waiting to see what happens (or if any other universities stick their neck out first). At Stanford University, one financial aid administrator explained that the university would consider a similar action "if the situation were to arise here."
In the meantime, there's a chance that the law could simply go away. In February 2001, Barney Frank introduced a bill to Congress that would repeal the law. Since then, 66 cosponsors from both parties have signed on. But as Frank's secretary Peter Kovar complains, "There's been no action on the bill, and frankly it's an uphill fight with the Republican administration."
Meanwhile, in December, Souder submitted an amendment to his bill that would restrict the disqualification of students for drug offenses to "those students who committed offenses while receiving student financial aid." The amendment is slowly working its way through the committee process, but it still doesn't address the question of how, exactly, the Department of Education would find those students in the first place. (Souder's press secretary Becker suggests that maybe there could be some kind of "reporting mechanism between legal agencies" that would track student drug convictions, but he's noticeably vague on the details.)
This piece of panicked legislation, like others that emerged during the war on drugs, is likely to be slow to change. Nearly 20 years after the national hysteria about crack, for example, we still have laws on the books that will put a person in jail for decades for possessing even the tiniest amount of crack, or throwing a party where drugs are used. The Drug-Free Student Aid provision, which is so flawed that even the congressman who wrote it wants it to change it, may not disappear any faster.
The nation's war on drugs has consumed vast amounts of funding -- for the criminal justice system, interdiction and heavy-handed propaganda designed to bring national drug use to a halt. But education, with its psychological and financial benefits, is widely acknowledged to be perhaps the best deterrent of all. Isn't it ironic, then, that this piece of legislation would deny even a small amount of financial aid to those with troubled pasts who are now trying to improve their lives.
The proponents of the provision argue that public money shouldn't be going to students who are using drugs. By this backhanded reasoning, we must be satisfied with the fact that the money we save keeping kids out of college can be put to better use building jails, where these same kids, hopeless and unsupported, will eventually end up.
