Drug Busts Hit Students Hard (WI Druggies Lose Financial Aid)

Madison.com ^ | July 18, 2005 | Megan Doughty

[stainlessbanner]

"So it all just falls on my parents, which I'm not proud of. But I just can't come up with that kind of money."

Big enough to run drugs and party like big man on campus, but he can't pay for his own college. That's the problem.

[Freebird Forever]

Baldwin called the current law "incredibly inconsistent" because it targets even the most casual of drug users while ignoring convictions for violent crime.

This may very well be the only time I find myself in agreement with Ms. Baldwin. But disallowing financial aid to someone who's been busted for weed while allowing a convicted child molester or a rapist or a murderer to remain eligible for grants and loans does not appear just.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"If you take the King's coin you do the King's bidding."

Ooo! I like that one! :)

[tfecw]

All of them...I think. Well they play a part to *getting* aid. Check out the form here... http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/
You can fill out the form to see the questions, I pretty sure there was a section that asked if you were convicted of a crime.

[thoughtomator]

I thought the problem was that the kid who smokes pot gets kicked out for lack of ability to pay, but you and I still subsidize his child molesting classmates?

[mysterio]

Plenty of the people here that will applaud this experimented with drugs in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and didn't get caught and now they are playing hardass with someones future.

This is absolutely the truth. But they didn't get caught and "times were different then." These threads are just crawling with hypocrites anxious to cast the first stone.

Let's be fair

I don't think the authoritarian statist drug warriors are capable of that.

[beltfed308]

Bush's fault....Had to do it :)

[ncountylee]

Sorry Dude, but your choices were not consistent with you professed goals and not our fault.

[tfecw]

Whoops actually I'm not sure if it is everything else. I filled out the form in 99 so maybe it was different.

The form for 05-06 school year had the "convicted of drug use" question, but not the "convicted of crime" question, I'm at the tax portion of the form now and I'm too lazy to finish going through it.

[AF_Blue]

"Of course, I can't pick up that kind of slack," Bush said, adding that state aid covers only about half of the $15,000 a year he pays for his education. "So it all just falls on my parents, which I'm not proud of. But I just can't come up with that kind of money."

Obviously math isn't one of his stronger subjects:
$5.15/hr (min wage) x 28 hrs/week (part-time) x 52 weeks (in a year) = $7498.40
which, if I've done the math correctly (not being a college student myself), grosses out to about half of $15K.

[theDentist]

"So it all just falls on my parents..."

Who says sh** doesn't flow uphill? If he were my kid, I'd say, "Nathan, you're on your own."

[KeyesPlease]

I agree with you. My opinion is that the generous amount of financial aid ranging from grants to loans is the primary driver of the costs of higher education. Before all of these programs existed people paid for college in 2 main ways: (1) saved up for it or worked through it and/or (2) parents. Colleges know that those sources of funds will always be there so the cost of education rises, more or less, as: (financial aid available + whatever students get from savings, work and parents) whereas before, tutition was affordable without financial aid. Now, students must mortgage their futures in many instances.

[stainlessbanner]

Exactly my point. Daddy's pays the tution, Junior keeps partying.

[cubram]

Do you apply this rationale to health care? Hefty amounts of insurance allows doctors to recommend unnecessary treatments and diagnostics and charge whatever they want.

[oldbrowser]

This slack-brained "university" type will not learn any lesson from that scenario. His parents should say, Gee, sorry, DUDE, but you're going to have to drop out, go to work, and save up the money."

He is not going to learn anything anyway, let someone who wants to learn take the chair.

[Old Professer]

Master Bush is probably hoping his parents remain in their fog.

[TheRake]

As part of this year's reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.............

I guess there's a new meaning to "higher learning"!

[Nathan Zachary]

He COULD get a job, but I guess that sounds to much like work, and takes away all the fun of partying and smoking dope, which landed him where he is in the first place.

It's very easy to avoid all this, don't use drugs. Students are supposed to be going to school to learn, not fry their brains on drugs. They aren't needed period.

[Skooz]

Absolutely.

Not so much to insurance, because most insurance must be answerable to market forces at some point. But Medicare and Medicaid, which are pretty much blank checks, have driven medical costs into the stratosphere.

[Flatus I. Maximus]

Yes, times were different then. If you got busted, there was no pussy-footing around with losing your finanacial aid; you might lose your 2S draft deferment, and win an all-expenses-paid trip to Southeast Asia. Some of my friends did. Some of them came back in Hefty bags. Some are still MIA.

Choices have consequences. Stupid choices can have disastrous consequences. Learn to live with it, and learn to make smart choices.

I'm not a hypocrite. I'm experienced, and I hope you're capable of learning from someone else's hard-won experience. But if you aren't, I feel no obligation to dig into my wallet to pay for your stupid choices.