Posted on 07/18/2005 12:38:06 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Financial aid loss under review
WASHINGTON - When 20-year-old Nathan Bush was pulled over in Kenosha last October with drug paraphernalia plainly visible in his car, he lost his driver's license - and tens of thousands of dollars in financial aid.
Bush, an incoming junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he could have been slapped with the far more serious charge of possession of marijuana, but instead had all of his federal dollars taken away in courtroom negotiations.
"Of course, I can't pick up that kind of slack," Bush said, adding that state aid covers only about half of the $15,000 a year he pays for his education. "So it all just falls on my parents, which I'm not proud of. But I just can't come up with that kind of money."
According to Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, the federal government since 1998 has refused educational aid to more than 160,000 students like Bush, including many who were convicted of drug-related offenses before their initial application for aid.
As part of this year's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which a congressional committee is expected to consider this week, the so-called "retroactivity clause" could be repealed - in other words, the government could no longer legally withhold tuition assistance from students who were convicted of drug-related offenses before they filed their first application.
Tom Angell of SSDP said the measure is inadequate and called for broader legislation that would loosen the restrictions on students, like Bush, who are convicted while in school.
"While we welcome the change and think that it will help many students, there are still others who will be losing their aid," Angell said. "It's sort of like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound."
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, is one of 68 co-sponsors of a bill supported by the student group that would abolish the government's right to deny financial aid based on drug-related offenses, even if a student is convicted while enrolled in college.
Baldwin called the current law "incredibly inconsistent" because it targets even the most casual of drug users while ignoring convictions for violent crime.
"There's no prohibition on somebody who has been convicted of rape or murder," Baldwin said. "In practice, this is most likely to affect somebody who had one instance of illegal behavior during their youth."
Margaret Reiter, president of the UW-Madison chapter of the student group, added that many students probably don't report drug convictions because they doubt the Department of Education will investigate their past.
"It's only the honest students who are going to get punished," Reiter said. "They think it would be a huge waste of time and money for the government to go checking them out."
The original law that allowed the Department of Education to "suspend eligibility for drug-related offenses" was passed seven years ago as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which was originally crafted in 1965 to facilitate college education for low-income and minority students.
Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., introduced the drug-related provision. Souder spokesman Martin Green said the logic behind the legislation is quite simple.
"Students who receive taxpayer dollars to go to college are not making the most of it by taking drugs," Green said. "It's one thing if they're paying for their education or if their parents are paying for it, but it's unfair to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for a student with a drug habit."
The bill was also designed, Green said, as a preventative measure under the assumption that students hoping to receive financial aid would be less likely to use and sell drugs.
Angell takes issue with this reasoning, arguing that "the provision is only a deterrent to recovery and education."
Souder and Angell agree, however, on one surprising point. Green said Souder, as an Evangelical Christian who believes strongly in redemption, never intended for the bill to behave retroactively and neither did the two chambers of Congress when they passed it. That interpretation of the enforcement plan was made, he said, by the Clinton administration just before the bill was signed into law.
"Congressman Souder was outraged, of course, when the enforcement regulations were released, and he's been working ever since then to overturn that provision," Green said. "He's pleased that he has bipartisan support to restore the original intent of Congress."
Under the original bill, a student convicted of a drug-related crime was disqualified for financial aid from the date of conviction until a date determined based on number of prior convictions and nature of the crime. A student convicted of possession of a controlled substance for the first time, for example, loses eligibility for one year while a student caught selling for the second time is disqualified indefinitely.
Green said the language was not intended to exclude students applying for financial aid after their convictions, regardless of how recently they were in court.
But like Angell, Bush said he feels "hurt" by the measure as a whole and will continue to oppose it, whether or not it behaves retroactively.
"I just feel like there's no compassion in that law," Bush said. "It's just one strike and you're out. There are a lot of smart kids who smoke marijuana at Madison, and they're going to lose their money just for that? It really hurts me."
Bush, who graduated high school in Paddock Lake with a 3.8 GPA and considers himself a good student as a kinesiology and nutritional science major, said he attends weekly drug court and counseling sessions and is now drug free. He added that he is not sure when he will regain his financial aid but emphasized that he is eager to. He feels guilty, he said, because his parents already paid his legal bills on top of financing his sister's college education.
"I'll just keep applying every year and hoping," Bush said.
Big enough to run drugs and party like big man on campus, but he can't pay for his own college. That's the problem.
This may very well be the only time I find myself in agreement with Ms. Baldwin. But disallowing financial aid to someone who's been busted for weed while allowing a convicted child molester or a rapist or a murderer to remain eligible for grants and loans does not appear just.
"If you take the King's coin you do the King's bidding."
Ooo! I like that one! :)
All of them...I think. Well they play a part to *getting* aid. Check out the form here... http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/
You can fill out the form to see the questions, I pretty sure there was a section that asked if you were convicted of a crime.
I thought the problem was that the kid who smokes pot gets kicked out for lack of ability to pay, but you and I still subsidize his child molesting classmates?
Bush's fault....Had to do it :)
Obviously math isn't one of his stronger subjects:
$5.15/hr (min wage) x 28 hrs/week (part-time) x 52 weeks (in a year) = $7498.40
which, if I've done the math correctly (not being a college student myself), grosses out to about half of $15K.
Who says sh** doesn't flow uphill? If he were my kid, I'd say, "Nathan, you're on your own."
I agree with you. My opinion is that the generous amount of financial aid ranging from grants to loans is the primary driver of the costs of higher education. Before all of these programs existed people paid for college in 2 main ways: (1) saved up for it or worked through it and/or (2) parents. Colleges know that those sources of funds will always be there so the cost of education rises, more or less, as: (financial aid available + whatever students get from savings, work and parents) whereas before, tutition was affordable without financial aid. Now, students must mortgage their futures in many instances.
Exactly my point. Daddy's pays the tution, Junior keeps partying.
Do you apply this rationale to health care? Hefty amounts of insurance allows doctors to recommend unnecessary treatments and diagnostics and charge whatever they want.
He is not going to learn anything anyway, let someone who wants to learn take the chair.
Master Bush is probably hoping his parents remain in their fog.
As part of this year's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.............
I guess there's a new meaning to "higher learning"!
He COULD get a job, but I guess that sounds to much like work, and takes away all the fun of partying and smoking dope, which landed him where he is in the first place.
It's very easy to avoid all this, don't use drugs. Students are supposed to be going to school to learn, not fry their brains on drugs. They aren't needed period.
Choices have consequences. Stupid choices can have disastrous consequences. Learn to live with it, and learn to make smart choices.
I'm not a hypocrite. I'm experienced, and I hope you're capable of learning from someone else's hard-won experience. But if you aren't, I feel no obligation to dig into my wallet to pay for your stupid choices.
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