By C.G. Lynch

A proposed bill by House Republicans could take up to $3.8 million a year in campus-based aid away from Northeastern and reallocate those funds to schools in the south and west, according to a study by the American Council on Education (ACE).

The programs directly impacted by the considered legislation, fall under $1.7 billion of campus-based aid, which includes federal work-study funding, Perkins Loans and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants.

If passed, the bill would affect many institutions in New England, with Northeastern enduring the largest brunt of the cuts and losing $2.2 million a year in work-study funding, the ACE projected.

Proposed by Ohio Repub-lican John Boehner, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, the bill would eliminate the base guarantee many colleges – NU among them – receive from the federal government, and make future allocations on a new formula that distributes funds purely on a need basis.

“At the heart of this is basic fairness,” said Alexa Marrero, a spokesperson for the House committee. “The formula change will ensure that funds will be allocated on the basis for which they are intended. This change is to make college more accessible for lower-income students.”

While Marrero acknowledged the change would affect many schools in the northeast, she warned that ACE’s study is misleading. ACE assumed the base guarantee would be eliminated in the 2003-04 school year, when, in reality, the formula change would be phased in gradually until 2015.

Jacqueline King, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at ACE, said the new legislation appears geographically-driven because many schools in the northeast benefited from the original base-guarantee program, which dates back to the late 1970s.

“In New England, since a lot of colleges have been in the program for a long time, they would lose money,” King said.

Opponents of the legislation, including Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, said the bill would hinder low-income students from attending Northeastern.

“The House proposal to change the formula on campus-based aid is the most recent attempt at a Republican shell game,” Kennedy said in a statement to the News. “Cutting millions from Northeastern to shift to other colleges means that deserving, needy students at Northeastern will lose the money they need to attend college.”

As an alternative, Kennedy called for funding increases and said the House committee’s bill would merely create competition for funding among colleges.

“Instead of pitting one campus against another, we need to increase the funding for these programs so that every student with financial need gets assistance they need to make college a reality,” Kennedy said.

Among the hardest hit by the legislation would be work-study students, who rely on the program to earn extra money while keeping up with schoolwork.

Eric Melle, a senior civil engineering major, has been in the work-study program since his freshman year.

“If I had to get a regular job, I’d probably get bad grades and fall behind in school,” Melle said. Melle works at the security desk of Snell Library.

Other students echoed his sentiments. Lawrencia Vannis, a middler undecided major who works at the work-study office, where she is paid under the work-study program, said the cuts to the program would be detrimental to many lower-income students.

“It allows you the ability to make some money and still have the flexibility to get school work done,” Vannis said. “But for some [very needy] students, it’s much more than that.”

University employers expressed a strong reliance on work-study students and the necessary funding to pay them. Student Activities has, at times, hired as many as 15 students to work at their office in the Curry Student Center.

“Work study is the fabric of the Student Activities office,” said Stacey Stokes, a staff assistant in charge of hiring work-studies there. “We rely heavily on work-study students and work-study funding.”

In order to pass, the bill must first pass through the committee and then in the floor of the House and Senate for a vote. Officials from the House Committee on Education and Workforce said no date has yet been scheduled for a floor vote.