For millions of students nationwide, federal financial aid provides crucial assistance in meeting the ever-spiraling costs of college education. But what happens when students are convicted of breaking the law? Should they be eligible for the same aid as everyone else?

A recent scholarship for students with drug convictions is putting the issue to the test. On March 26, the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCN), a coalition of drug-law reform groups, unveiled the John W. Perry Fund scholarships. The name may get some public sympathy: Perry was a New York City police officer who died rescuing civilians from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. But the cause isn’t quite so apple-pie. Perry largely opposed laws against drugs, and the Perry Fund seeks to extend private financial aid to a group of students who, under current law, can’t get it from taxpayers: convicted drug offenders.

In 1998, Congress passed a law requiring all applicants for federal financial aid to indicate whether they have “ever been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs.” Those who fail to answer the question or answer ‘yes’ risk being deprived of federal aid for a period of one year following the date of conviction. As a result, thousands of applicants each year are refused federal loans and grants. Indeed, according to one U.S. Department of Education estimate, of this year’s 10.5 million federal aid applicants, 47,063 risk being turned down due to the 1998 law.

These numbers have led to a backlash among many college administrators and drug-law reformers. Concerned that, in the absence of federal aid, otherwise-promising students will be forced to quit school, both Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and, more recently, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania have designed specially tailored loans and grants for affected students. So far, there have been no takers. Even so, Hampshire President Gregory Prince describes his college’s aid program as a necessary step in combating the “larger pattern of discriminatory impact, intended or not intended, that the drug policy has had on different communities, particularly minority communities.”

By targeting loans at students whose drug convictions render them ineligible for federal money, the newly created Perry Fund seeks to put scholarships of the Hampshire/Swarthmore variety on a national footing. The Fund hopes to raise $100,000 in private donations for scholarships of $2,000 each at its inaugural fund-raiser.

For critics of the 1998 law, funding students with drug records is simply common sense. To deprive drug offenders of access to the loans and grants necessary for education is to deprive them of hope. What they need, reformers argue, is a second chance, not further punishment. In this, the reformers are no doubt right. But there’s a hitch. Convicted drug offenders already do have a second chance — and a third one, too.

Under current law, federal financial aid is withheld from convicted drug offenders only for the period of one year following their conviction. If, at the end of that year, they have been convicted of no further drug-related offenses, they become as eligible as the next student for federal aid. If, on the other hand, they are convicted a second time, they become ineligible for two further years, at the end of which period they may once again receive federal funding. But should he instead break the law yet again, financial aid is withheld until the student has undergone a course of drug rehabilitation.

Built into this three-tier system is an entirely reasonable series of coupled incentives and disincentives. Break the law once and the state will inconvenience you by depriving of you of funding for a period of one year. Break it twice, and the state will inconvenience you twice as much. Break it three times or more and the state will inconvenience you indefinitely. In each of these cases, student eligibility is restored by a simple show of good behavior: if the student really wants to get a loan, he only need stop breaking the law.

To claim that this system is unfair, as do many drug-law reformers, is to claim that somehow we have no right to ask students to obey the law. Young people frequently become lost or confused, it is true, and this fact should not be used to prevent them from getting another chance in life. But then the law provides for this: With one or two convictions, college aid is still just a matter of time and good behavior. As for those students with three or more convictions (in as many years), it’s hard to resist the conclusion that they are either too sick or too stupid to be in college in the first place. Rehab is likely to do them more good than the dorm room.

What opponents of the 1998 law are demanding, then, is not a second chance but rather something closer to immunity: No matter the number or severity of offenses, they seem to be saying, students must never be deprived of their “right” to financial aid. In fact, no such right exists. Financial aid is a privilege, not a right.

It’s a distinction which few opponents of current law seem able to grasp. As one student indignantly put the point after nearly losing her financial aid award when police twice discovered her in possession of marijuana, “It’s not the government’s business what I do.” John Perry’s mother, Patricia, said her son took a similar view of the matter. According to her, John believed that “adults should be able to do with their bodies whatever they wish, as long as they don’t hurt anybody.”

It’s possible to poke all sorts of holes in that position — to show the many ways illegal drugs do hurt people, and not just the ones who buy, sell, and use them. But that’s beside the point here. The point is that private individuals don’t have the right to pick and choose which laws they’ll obey, much less to demand benefits when they disobey the law.

Of course, targeted private scholarships are hardly new on the college scene. One need only go down to the local financial aid office to discover a bewildering array of interested parties eager to grease the wheels for selected students. Private citizens can and do use their money however they like, even when that means helping convicted drug offenders escape the consequences of their deeds.

And yet, for all that, the Perry Fund is part of a new and disturbing trend in the world of college aid. Earlier this year, the University of California decided to extend in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens who had attended California secondary schools (illegally) for at least three years. Despite the fact that the affected students have no legal right to tax-payer funded education — much less any right to be in the country in the first place — they now pay $10,000 a year less than students from Nevada, Arizona, or Michigan. Indeed, they pay $10,000 a year less than do legal aliens on student visas, who have no right to claim residency. If I were a foreigner interested in attending the University of California, I know what I would do.

While the Perry Fund and in-state tuition waivers for illegal aliens attending the University of California might seem to have little in common, they share the same fundamental goal: to make it easier for students who have broken the law to act as if they hadn’t. Though such programs may not directly encourage students to engage in criminal activity, they certainly give the impression that it’s okay to do so.

In this manner, our universities, with the collusion of private interest groups, are increasingly taking on the role of silent legislators. Immigration law, we are led to infer, is somehow less serious than other types of law. It’s the same message they send regarding drugs: Giving students breaks against the expressed will of Congress is just one way of saying that drug use is a normal and perfectly legitimate aspect of the college experience. Thanks to this new genre of crime scholarships, where certain categories of crime are concerned, it does indeed pay to break the law.