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By Josh Wolf

Daily Bruin Contributor

Students who have been convicted of drug crimes become automatically ineligible for federal financial aid under current law, but a bill making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives would change that.

Representative Barney Frank, D-Mass., has introduced legislation to repeal the ban on federal financial aid for students with drug convictions, saying that current law is both misguided and unfair.

“It doesn’t seem to be the right way to deal with the problem,” said Peter Kovar, a spokesman with Frank’s office.

While existing policy is in line with the nation’s war on drugs, Frank believes that its selectivity is one of its problems.

“Someone who commits murder or armed robbery is not automatically barred from financial aid eligibility,” Frank said in a statement.

“This is the only type of conviction for which there is an automatic denial of aid,” Kovar added. “They’re singling out this crime.”

Another of Frank’s concerns is the people affected by the current law. Financial aid officers in his home state of Massachusetts brought the issue to his attention.

The restriction on financial aid to students with drug convictions was forcing students to skip college altogether, Kovar said.

The bill imposes a restriction on financial aid and not enrollment, so students from wealthier families can sustain drug convictions and still pay their way through college, but many students cannot.

Existing law has had a disproportionate effect on people that are less well off – especially minorities – according to Kovar.

“Members of minority groups will have a harder time attending college,” Kovar said.

Ronald Johnson, the director of financial aid at UCLA, said that the current law has not been applied to any students enrolled at UCLA.

“We really haven’t had any circumstances where a student has been barred from receiving financial aid,” Johnson said.

Even if a student was subject to the federal restriction, the University of California’s distribution of financial aid, which is independent of the federal policy, can compensate.

“The University of California has taken the position that it is not going to adhere to (the restrictive policy) with its own funding,” Johnson said.

But the law has still had an effect on students at UCLA and nationwide, as it has slowed down the processing of their requests for federal aid.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid that students must complete to receive financial aid includes a mandatory question about the applicant’s drug convictions.

In the past, many students left the question blank, and the U.S. Department of Education decided not to pursue the issue because of the magnitude of the effort. But last year, the words “Do not leave question 35 blank” appeared next to the answer bubbles, and department employees were instructed to follow up on blank answers.

All of this has led to a backlog as the USDE must process the applicants’ answers.

“The most grievous part is that it could be administratively disruptive and delay getting funds to students,” Johnson said. “The real concern is the fact that this is a bureaucratic hurdle that is affecting hundreds of thousands of students.”

But this doesn’t mean that Frank’s proposal will necessarily meet with success.

“They’re trying to repeal a regulation that says you shouldn’t be using drugs,” Johnson said, noting that this seems counter-intuitive.

“The House of Representatives is dominated by conservative Republicans,” Kovar said. “(The bill) won’t move very quickly.”

Frank’s bill, HR 786, would repeal the current law that was passed in 1998. The law created standards for ineligibility based on the extent of the crime. For possession, the first offense results in a one-year suspension of ineligibility, the second in a two-year ban, and the third in an indefinite suspension.

Punishments for selling controlled substances are accelerated. The first conviction results in a two-year suspension and the second leads to an indefinite suspension.

On April 20, the bill was referred to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Work force, where it is still under review.