Drug Convictions & Financial Aid Reform

A mad dash...to FAFSA application:

My son Erik was arrested on a drug possession charge in 2004. I remember the second thing that went through my mind on the morning of that fateful call was; there goes your future! Knowing that a drug conviction would make him in-eligible for financial aid, and this would seriously narrow his options, his future. In between the on going fight my husband Mike and I engaged in regarding Erik and who was to blame, why, and how to fix it, which it turns out = clank both of our heads together, while the children are in the corner lighting matches. The house still burns down, and you can think what ever you like about it. Something had been burning for a long time. Tightly encased in my conceptual reality, I couldn't see, feel, or know what was really happening and or how to fix it. Uncertainty would have been actually ok, but I didn't have that luxury, one thing was very certain. I knew that a question was being posed daily and that question was; will today be the day when his behavior finally catches up with him. The morning I received a collect call from the Dallas County Jail was the culmination of my fears and in that moment I felt as if a part of me died. Which in fact it did, the part of me that held out hope despite the fear and wisdom. having Erik was that together said, this boy and the crazy situations he creates and pursues can't possibly have a happy ending. The thoughts that circled within me alternated between hope and fear but they at least offset each other. However, on the day his fate took a turn and his behavior caught up with him, there was no thing that I could think of, that would offset reality. Hope has been my constant companion, I have reverted to through out all my struggles and hardships. It has always served me. There has been only one other time in my life, that hope was been unable to resque me from, when my father died. Hope and death share nothing, they exist on such opposing ground as you traverse the gap the other must be left behind. This gap was traversed. Apparently though hope can be reserected(sp), it appears the financial aid penalties are being reconsidered.

The laws that deny financial aid to individuals convicted of a drug offense are counter intuitive, we are not what we have done in the past, they are only parts of us, change occurs, people change, unless the circumstances that surround one prevent that...and this is preventative to have laws that forever bind us to our past mistakes. People learn from mistakes.

Here are the latest results of various attempts to overturn the laws which deny financial aid assistance to people who have been convicted of a drug offense.

I am grateful to humanity and these individuals are a fine example of the best of us as they fight to overturn laws that don't serve us. -el