The rejection notices from the graduate programs at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri didn’t offer Stanley Andrisse an explanation. But the former drug dealer thinks he knows why the schools turned him down: He checked the box on the application that asked whether he’d been convicted of a crime.
It took a former professor personally vouching for him before he finally won admission to St. Louis University, where he earned a doctorate.
"I am a convicted felon," Andrisse, now a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told Maryland lawmakers this month at a hearing on whether the state should forbid questions about criminal records on college applications. "But I am also a doctor, a scientist . . . a youth mentor, a published author and many other things. Eliminating me before you know all of these other great things is an injustice to society."
A bill being debated by the General Assembly would make Maryland the first state to prohibit public and private colleges and universities from including questions about criminal history on their applications. Admissions offices could still ask applicants who have been accepted whether they have been convicted of a crime, but could not withdraw an offer of admission based on the answer.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/taking-a-lawbreaking-past-out-of-college-applications/2017/02/27/c98efe3e-f311-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html