Judge Lets Teens Who Drank Rum on Band Trip Return to Class

Two Capistrano Valley High School students returned to school Tuesday after a three-week suspension by the school district, which is moving to expel them for drinking rum on a spring-break trip to Europe with the school band and drill team.

Orange County Superior Court Judge William F. McDonald ordered the girls reinstated on Monday, pending the outcome of a May 20 hearing. Despite that, the Capistrano Unified School District plans to continue expulsion proceedings, said Supt. James A. Fleming, who criticized the court ruling.

“This sends a mixed message to young people about whether the adult community is serious about addressing the teen alcohol and drug problem,” he said.

The district suspended the 17-year-old girls--Stacey Ogg, a senior, and Veronica Behunin, a junior--on April 20 for violating its zero-tolerance policy against drugs and alcohol.

The 8-month-old policy, approved by the Capistrano school board, says that any student who buys, sells, consumes or is in possession of alcohol or drugs on school grounds or at any school-related event is recommended for expulsion. A panel of three school officials reviews the recommendation and final action is taken by the school board. The number of students affected by the policy was not immediately available Tuesday.

During the 10-day trip to Austria, Germany and Switzerland, the girls, who are members of the drill team, purchased a fifth of Bacardi rum, brought it back to their hotel room in Salzburg and drank an undetermined amount before both of them got sick, their lawyer, David Shores, said.

Chaperons were notified and for the three remaining days, Stacey and Veronica were segregated from other students on the booster club-sponsored trip. When they returned, they were suspended for five days. Then they each received letters saying their suspensions would continue indefinitely pending the outcome of an expulsion hearing.

That’s when they hired Shores.

“I don’t see any way, shape or form that these girls should be expelled,” he said. “I don’t believe that they are a danger to the school or detrimental to the instructional process.”

Shores, an Irvine-based lawyer, said the zero-tolerance policy is illegal because its bottom-line, no-exceptions philosophy prevents the girls from adequately defending their actions.

In addition, Stacey and Veronica did not violate the school regulation, according to Shores, because they were drinking in Austria on a trip not directly sponsored by the school, but by its booster club. Fleming said the trip was clearly a school-sponsored event.

The school district defends its policy as a way of controlling the growing societal problem of alcohol and substance abuse among teens. Both Shores and Fleming said the two girls are good students who have never been in trouble.

“If we get into the business of looking the other way or downgrading the significance of the actions, I don’t think this is going to solve the problem,” Fleming said.

In a similar incident last month, Shores defended Ryan Huntsman when Newport-Mesa school officials concluded that the 18-year-old Corona del Mar High School student violated that district’s zero-tolerance policy.

Huntsman was suspended and order to transfer to neighboring Newport Harbor High School after a traffic stop during which a police officer found drug paraphernalia but no drugs in his possession. The student took and passed a drug test, but school officials refused to allow him back into the same school. He fought the mandatory transfer in part by arguing that the traffic stop occurred during off-school hours when the district’s zero-tolerance policy does not apply.

Huntsman has returned to Corona del Mar High School and he is expected to graduate next month.

Now, Shores said, he receives 10 to 15 telephone calls a day from parents asking him to defend their child against zero-tolerance policies at school districts across the state. The one-size-fits-all law doesn’t work for everyone, he said.

“It’s not zero tolerance, it’s zero common sense, it’s zero justice,” Shores said.