Financial Aid Office will fund students if government won’t

By Sarika Gangar
Daily Bruin Contributor

Nationwide, students with drug convictions lost their federal
financial aid this year, but at UCLA ““ where no such cases
have occurred ““ the Financial Aid Office is prepared to
compensate for this loss.

Without federal aid ““ usually the largest source of aid
for students ““ some would not be able to continue attending
UCLA.

“I’m on financial aid, but my friend isn’t. If
we were to get caught getting high, then I wouldn’t be going
to school anymore but she would because her parents write the
checks,” said Oona Garthwaite, a second-year world arts and
cultures student.

A conviction could come from possessing less than one ounce of
marijuana and could result in a student’s loss of federal
financial aid for one year. Repeated convictions of selling or
possessing drugs could mean a loss of aid for an indefinite period
of time.

Ronald Johnson, director of the Financial Aid Office, said the
provision, part of the Higher Education Act of 1998, is
“ridiculous.”

In addition to continuing to provide university aid to students
with drug convictions, the FAO will attempt to compensate for the
lost aid with its own funds.

“We would have to handle this on a case-by-case basis. We
would try to replace those funds with institutional funds “¦
those may be loans or non-repayable funds or work-study,”
Johnson said.

But, he added, the office would have to reevaluate the situation
if the compensation amount is too high since the university does
not have “a bottomless pit of money.”

This year, financial aid has been given to 14,365 undergraduate
and 6,571 graduate students ““ none of whom have been denied
federal funding. But this could change because students have up
until May to apply for aid.

“Until we get into the heart of the year, since students
are continuing to submit applications, I can’t say we
won’t have any instances of this occurring,” Johnson
said.

There are two ways students with drug convictions can regain
their federal aid ““ by passing a drug rehabilitation program
or having the conviction reversed.

The Student Psychological Center runs a drug rehabilitation
program on campus in response to the provision. The program, which
includes two unannounced drug tests, takes a month or more to
complete.

According to Elizabeth Kemper, counseling attorney for Student
Legal Services, a good number of UCLA students have chosen to have
the conviction reversed through the Alternate Prosecution Program
run by the American Justice Associates.

First-time offenders can have the conviction lifted by
completing a roughly 15-hour program of filling out a workbook
after watching a video on the consequences of criminal behavior and
drug use.

Last year, due to confusion in the wording of the drug
conviction question on the Free Application for Federal Student
Aid, nearly 800,000 students left the question blank. But more than
7,000 who replied lost a portion or all of their federal aid.

Since it was the first year of the provision, the Department of
Education allowed students to rescind their responses. Thirty-three
UCLA students admitted to a drug conviction on the application but
later changed their answer.

The government decided to clarify the question for the 2001-02
FAFSA and held off on fully enforcing the law until this year.

Answering the question about past drug convictions on the FAFSA
is now required, but individual applications are not checked to
verify the accuracy of the information students provide.

“We in the Financial Aid Office are not required to do any
verification as to the validity of their answers,” said Nick
Valdivia, assistant director of the FAO.

But providing false information could prove costly.

“(The Department of Education) do random audits, so it
would be a huge risk for students to lie on the FAFSA because
students can be permanently disqualified from federal aid,”
Kemper said.

Some students support the provision as an effective deterrent to
drug use.

“By giving out financial aid to law breakers, the
government is saying it’s OK to break the law. It is
hypocritical of them to condone actions that are illegal,”
said first-year undeclared student Rachel Prucey.

But the punishment is perceived as too severe by others.

“I can understand the government’s point of view,
but I think the punishment is a little hard for a drug like
marijuana,” said second-year undeclared student Ben
Stein.

There remains hopes of repealing the provision, “a
provision strongly supported by Republicans,” according to
Kemper.

Despite the large amount of opposition toward the provision by
educators, repealing the provision may prove difficult.

“It’s swimming against the current,” Johnson
said. “Most people would say, “˜How can you go against
something which goes against drug use?'”

He said that people need to realize college students are
attempting to achieve goals and should not be targets in the war
against drugs.

“There are better avenues to wage the war on drugs than
the college campus,” he said.