Every fall, students at Gustavus receive an email informing them that any federal or state drug conviction can disqualify a student from receiving federal student aid grants or loans. This policy is the result of a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, signed into law during Clinton’s “war on drugs”. This is an appallingly bad policy. Student federal aid is designed to encourage more people to go to college, especially people who might not otherwise have the means to attend.

By blocking federal aid for drug offenses, students convicted of a drug offense are less likely to attend college, and if they lose their aid while enrolled, they may no longer be able to attend college due to financial difficulties. According to a 2013 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the law does not deter young people from committing drug felonies, and those convicted of drug offenses are at a higher risk of never attending college at all due, in part, to the impediments of the law.

Furthermore, this law unfairly targets minorities. In Minnesota, though drug use rates are similar, black people are six times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than their white counterparts. This means that black students are at a higher risk of losing federal student aid for committing the same offenses as their white peers. Additionally, this policy disproportionately punishes less affluent students. Students that need federal student aid to attend college lose the means to fund their education, while affluent students who receive no aid are not in danger of dropping out as the result of a drug offense.

One way to regain federal student aid eligibility is the completion of a drug rehabilitation program. Though this appears to be a reasonable option, it is extraordinarily cost prohibitive, often costing as much if not more than a semester of tuition. Once again, poor students get the short end of the stick. Ridiculously, this law compounds the financial punishment of a drug offense.

In Minnesota, possession of 42.5 grams or less of marijuana has a maximum fine of $200. However, the true cost of a misdemeanor possession charge is thousands of dollars for a college student. This is outrageous. It should be abundantly clear that the punishment does not fit the crime. This law makes no distinction between a college student who gets busted with a joint, and someone who is selling felonious amounts of serious drugs.

The students who lose their aid after a drug offense are not lazy, bad students.

In order to receive federal student aid, students must have a minimum GPA of 2.0. The students who lose their aid after a drug offense are not lazy, bad students. They are just unlucky. Unlucky for being among the half of all full time college students who have used an illicit drug at some point in their lives, and busted for it.

Ironically, their peers who have committed a sexual offense don’t lose their federal student aid. Drug use is much more egregious than sexual assault, apparently. In fact, a convicted rapist or murderer will have no trouble receiving federal student aid, while a student who lights up a bowl of weed apparently imperils his or her entire college education. Something is seriously wrong here.

So long as young people continue their dismal attendance at the polls, this absurd law will remain on the books, and millions of students’ futures will hang in the balance. Every time we blindly scroll through an email informing us of our (lack of) rights, we condone bad laws that harm our peers and ourselves.

When we ignore the implications of a policy like this, we are gambling with our education. Ignorance isn’t bliss when you lose your federal student aid because you didn’t know that your government is more afraid of drugs than an uneducated populace.