NEWPORT BEACH : Harbor High Cheer Squad Suspended

When the Newport Harbor Sailors played their first home game of the high school football season against the Orange Panthers Friday night, there were no cheerleaders to root for the home team.

It wasn’t a lack of school spirit that kept the squad off the sidelines, but a nearly month-old incident in which the cheerleaders allegedly drank alcohol and invited boyfriends to their rooms at cheerleading summer camp.

“Their adviser has suspended them from participating for the next three weeks,” said Dennis Evans, principal of Newport Harbor High School. “Some of the girls weren’t involved, but for the sake of unity, they’ve all decided not to participate.”

Although the cheerleaders will be temporarily benched, they will not be reprimanded under the district’s strict “zero-tolerance” policy--a year-old rule under which any student caught with drugs or alcohol at school is transferred for 90 days to another campus. On the second offense, students are expelled.

Each principal is responsible for deciding when to invoke the policy, and Evans said he won’t apply it to the girls because there is no clear story about what happened in August when they attended the United Spirit Assn. camp at UC-Santa Barbara.

District officials also say it is unclear if the policy covers activities, particularly those in summer, where the students represent the school but are not sponsored by it. The girls paid their own way to the camp.

“When you discover something that allegedly occurred, and you discover it three weeks later, it’s pretty difficult to recreate exactly what happened,” said Evans. “It didn’t help that the girls were cheerleaders, and it didn’t hurt them. They were treated fairly.”

About 19 of the 25 girls on both the junior varsity and varsity teams had been drinking in their rooms and had invited the boys to the camp, according to complaints school officials received from parents.

Camp officials said they were unaware of the drinking but had been concerned because the girls were skipping classes and had dismantled the smoke detectors in their room.

“I could tell you exactly which room it was, we were up there quite a bit,” said Bobbi Zeno, camp director, “but the alcohol wasn’t a problem we knew about.”

She said that each year, about 30,000 students go through the United Spirit Assn. summer camps, and that there are always a few participants who want to break the rules. “There’s probably one a summer that we catch,” said Zeno.