Students might expect smoking marijuana to make them a little red-eyed or necessitate a late night excursion to Josiah's. What students might not know, however, is that lighting up a joint can also lead to something more ominous - the loss of federal financial aid.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a national organization with a Brown chapter that was founded in 2003, has been working to promote awareness about the drug provision of the Higher Education Act. The act was passed in 1965 to provide federal financial aid to low-income students, and the provision was added when the act was renewed in 1998. The provision prevents students who have been convicted of drug charges from receiving any federal financial aid.
If a Brown student were to lose federal financial aid, the Office of Financial Aid would not compensate students for lost federal funds, said Susan Farnum, interim director of financial aid. But Farnum said the drug provision has not yet affected potential financial aid applicants.
"It hasn't been a situation that we've encountered yet," Farnum said.
SSDP has worked on reforming the act in the past. In order to raise awareness about the drug provision, SSDP has organized demonstrations on the Main Green and lobbied local politicians to oppose the provision. A recent piece of legislation proposed by District 12 State Rep. Joseph Almeida, a Democrat, has called for Rhode Island to separate state aid from federal financial aid.
"If you don't have the money to go to college and you are caught with drugs, instead of providing you with an education, (the provision) demonizes people who have taken a drug even though that's 50 percent of America," said Matt Palevsky '07, a former vice president of SSDP. Palevsky added that approximately 150,000 students nationwide have been disqualified from financial aid because of prior drug convictions.
Palevsky claimed the provision unfairly targets low-income and minority students because they are statistically more likely to be arrested for drug charges. As a result, students who most need federal financial aid face the greatest obstacles in attaining it, he said.
"(Former American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Ira Glasser) has said that the movement to reform drug policy is the new civil rights movement," Palevsky said. "It disproportionately affects poor people, people of color, people in cities."
SSDP members also argue the drug provision takes opportunities away from people who might be trying to break a drug habit.
"People who have drug problems, who want to get out of that life, are not given the chance to do that," said Nureen Ghuznavi '08, also a former vice president of SSDP.
The law also does not deter students from using drugs, members of SSDP said, because the drug provision is not well publicized. Even most Brown students are not aware of how many people are affected by the drug provision, they said.
Some progress has been made recently in reforming the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, Ghuznavi said. Last spring, Congress amended the bill limiting the provision to drug offenses committed during college.
The organization has recently focused on other drug policy issues, according to its members. Two major issues for this semester are medical marijuana and voting rights for incarcerated felons. Still, the drug provision remains a concern for SSDP.
"The war on drugs isn't going to help our drug problem - it is discriminatory against people of color and people of low income," Ghuznavi said.
