cannabisnews.com: Column: New Financial Aid Policy an Injustice





Column: New Financial Aid Policy an Injustice
Posted by FoM on October 24, 1999 at 10:01:33 PT
By Kerry Wall MacLane, Montana Kaimin, U. Montana
Source: U-WIRE
Imagine a party at a local campsite to celebrate good SAT scores with your high school friends. A patrol car pulls up and you are busted for the 12 pack and a couple of joints on the picnic table. You can kiss your plan to attend college that fall goodbye thanks to the Higher Education Act passed last spring. 
(Can you believe the name of the act?) Federal Financial Aid will be denied one year for one offence, two years for two offenses and indefinitely for three or more busts. While the law itself is deplorable, I was especially ashamed of the support expressed for it by UM staff in the Sept. 14 headline article in the Kaimin. As a grateful recipient of Federal money for college, I certainly understand why the Financial Aid and faculty members quoted in the article may have been reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. Never the less, the law is harmful and hypocritical. What can we possibly gain by denying someone convicted of drug possession or sales an education? In my opinion the pursuit of a degree demonstrates a desire to become a contributing member of society. Would not drug dealing, which often leads to incarceration, be an all-too-likely fate of those rejected by the authorities? Which type of education is more cost effective and beneficial, that received in educational or penal institutions? The same people rejected by our government for smoking a joint at age 17 may well be on legally prescribed mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs. I know students on Ritalin, Valium, Zoloft, Prozac, Prednisone and other mood altering and potentially dangerous and addictive drugs. I would be surprised in none of the UM staff quoted in the article has never tried drugs classified as illegal. Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair revealed that our government has traded drugs for hostages and guns to further our foreign policy goals. I expect that future generations will be able to look back on our war on drugs and wonder how we could have avoided addressing the underlying reasons for drug abuse for so long while financial empires directed our national policies. A less optimistic prediction, articulated by writer and consciousness explorer Aldus Huxley, is of law-abiding populace medicated into submission by the corporate/Federal state. The same Kaimin article also highlighted the misguided priorities of Campus Security by its arrest of 64 students for drug violations last year, the majority involving marijuana. Such a charge would put a degree out of reach for me. Those students with means, such as those that George W. Bush enjoyed, would be free to continue on. You don't have to be in the School of Law to see a discrimination suit here. Like most people, I prefer to get high on life without the aid of mood altering substances. Fighting injustice is a rush. Go for it. October 20, 1999(C) 1999 Montana Kaimin via U-WIRE  Related Article & Web Site:Students For Sensible Drug Policyhttp://www.ssdp.org/Column: A More Sensible Drug Policy - 10/06/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3162.shtml
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