I don't want to continue to derail the thread--I'll get back on track in a minute--but loans can be denied for a number of reasons, not just drug convictions. A Stafford loan is ALMOST a guarantee for a school that is participating in the program. (Frankly, I would be suspicious of a school that isn't participating, but there could be non-suspect reasons that I'm unaware of.)
There are other reasons. If you have reached the max loan limit, you can't get more, of course. However, the limits are usually pretty generous. If you've defaulted on a previous loan--I think it has to be another federal loan--then they obviously aren't going to approve you for more loans. That can be a hard mistake to recover from. And it's always possible that a few people are denied because of mistakes or crossed wires. Such denials should be reversed after an appeal.
I also suspect that some FTMs are denied on Selective Service grounds (most of us at Susan's Place have heard about this possibility already). I know that it happened with my friend's free aid just this year, although he got it sorted out in the end, after he went through some appeals. He is M with the state and F with the feds, and that caused some problems. I don't know the specifics--maybe he filled out the wrong gender box (which, of course, would be his error)--but I know that he was at first denied because he hadn't registered with Selective Service Systems. Any man, whether cisgender or trans, can be denied federal loans for not registering with SSS. The exemption letter, if a guy has one, should clear that up. Or he can just check the "F" box.
Back to the subject at hand. Frankly, I am disturbed by some of the attitudes expressed in this thread. NOWHERE does the article say that trans people of color and trans people from low-income backgrounds can't succeed. The article simply points out that such folks face MORE discrimination and MORE hurdles than other trans folks who don't have those factors in their lives.
The article isn't specific about why young Chris was unable to get financial aid for college. That's unfortunate because such details might clarify whether Chris is grappling with a drug conviction, Selective Service issues, or just plain ignorance about how to get the financial aid he supposedly needs. Young people are often ignorant or even completely misinformed about such things, and young people from families with no college history are even more likely to be in the dark.
Case in point: My father has a degree, but I didn't know anything about financial aid. As an undergrad, I went to my college's financial aid office to inquire about what I might be eligible for. The woman I talked to was supposedly an expert, but when I told her my father's income, she got huffy and rude. She told me that I didn't qualify for ANY aid of ANY kind. I was ignorant, and she was the expert, so I took her word for it.
At a certain point in grad school, I went to my grad institution's financial aid office to inquire about a small loan, and I was treated so rudely (perhaps because I was recognizably trans?) and dismissively that I realized that I would rather tough it out than be treated like that again. The woman I talked to did NOT lay out different types of aid and tell me what types of aid I was and was not eligible for. It was pretty plain that she just wanted to get rid of me, and she did. When I mentioned my experience to a roomful of my undergrad students, many of them told me that this kind of treatment was the rule rather than the exception. A few said that they had complained but that nothing had been done. Most of my students at that time were people of color, and a large portion were from working class families. I began to wonder if the financial aid employee was simply racist, classist, and transphobic. And maybe a little power-mad.
If you're eighteen or twenty years old, from a non-college background, and already on the wrong foot because you're trans, those "experts" and "advisors" and the whole bureaucracy can be pretty intimidating, especially if they turn you away and you take their word for it out of sheer ignorance. And I should add that if you're an FTM and were raised as a girl, to be quiet, compliant, and compromising, that can go double or even triple.
