Education
Department
Will
Not
Ease
Student
Aid
Ban,
Author
Strongly
Critical
of
Decision
12/21/01
According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week, the US Department of Education has decided it does not have the authority to rewrite agency regulations so that the student aid ban on persons with drug convictions would apply only to students convicted of a drug offense while they are in college. In 1998, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) authored the anti-drug provision in the Higher Education Act (HEA), which mandates that students with drug convictions lose their student aid for specified periods. The law's language makes no distinction between old drug convictions and those received while students are attending college -- three possession convictions or two sales convictions render an applicant ineligible indefinitely -- but Souder, long an ardent drug warrior, has now emerged as a leading critic of the department's decision. According to the Chronicle, agency officials said they tried "nine ways to Sunday" to find a way around the law's language, but concluded that Congress would have to amend the HEA in order to make a distinction between pre- and post-enrollment drug convictions. The HEA does not give the department "the flexibility to address this in our regulations," department spokesman Jerry Andrade told the Chronicle. Rep. Souder strongly criticized the department for its decision. As a campaign led by Students for Sensible Drug Policy and DRCNet to repeal the anti-drug provision of the HEA has gained broad support, Souder has increasingly backed away from the current form of the bill he authored. The congressman from Ft. Wayne met with department officials several times this year to urge them to direct the provision only toward students who received drug convictions while receiving student aid, the Chronicle reported. Department officials met Wednesday with Souder to inform him of their decision, said the Chronicle. After the meeting, Souder said he could not understand why the agency was "unwilling to correct an erroneous regulation that is keeping otherwise deserving applicants from receiving federal funds to attend institutes of higher education." Souder has not said if he will seek to amend the law, but he now says that the law's intent was to punish only people who got drug convictions while in college, the Chronicle reported. After the Wednesday meeting, Souder told the Chronicle that if the Bush administration does not reverse its position, he would call Education Department officials before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform that he heads "so that members of Congress can directly ask administration officials why they have chosen to deny federal aid to prospective higher education students in clear defiance of the express intent of Congress." Congress passed Souder's provision in 1998, but it didn't have an impact until the 2000-2001 academic year. That year, more than 9,000 students lost financial aid because they honestly reported previous drug convictions on their financial aid application forms. So far this academic year, 14,249 students have lost some or all of their aid because of the provision, and another 29,000 could lose their aid because they either admitted prior convictions or did not answer the drug question on their application forms. SSDP national director Shawn Heller found no fault with the Dept. of Education, and while applauding Souder's concern for students whom he says he did not intend to lose financial aid, placed the onus for fixing the problem squarely on Souder. "The Dept. of Education, unlike the DEA, doesn't want to engage in regulatory fiat and change the law administratively," said Heller. "If Rep. Souder, who wrote this bill, doesn't feel certain people should lose their aid, he needs to go back and change it. This is further evidence of Souder's efforts to backtrack and enforce the rule less harshly, because public opinion just says no." Still, HEA reform advocates see the current flap as a sideshow to the central goal of repealing the law outright. "None of the central concerns raised over the HEA drug provision will be addressed by simply scaling the law back as Souder wants," said DRCNet executive director David Borden. "This law is economically discriminatory; it is based on a criminal justice system and drug war with enormous, unresolved racial disparities; and it is a second punishment levied against would-be students who have already been punished by the criminal justice system," said Borden. "Our allies in this effort, which include many of the nation's leading education and civil rights associations, have been clear all along that we seek full repeal." (Visit http://www.raiseyourvoice.com to learn more about this issue and how to get involved. Visit http://www.ssdp.org for information on Students for Sensible Drug Policy.)
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