Forty-two students at the Gilman School have been implicated in a drug scandal after a marijuana bust Friday that has shaken the Baltimore institution catering to the children of the city's elite since the last century.
The school's headmaster, Archibald R. Montgomery, said yesterday that some of the students came forward on their own and others were discovered during an internal investigation that led them to a student's locker and a small film canister filled with marijuana.
"It is an unhappy time at the Gilman School," Mr. Montgomery said. "We are trying to turn a negative into a positive. The fact that it happened here should give us some humility. As blessed as we are, we still haven't solved the [drug] problem."
After police arrested the 16-year-old student Friday morning on charges of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, school officials began to sort through the fallout.
They expelled four students, including the teen arrested, and suspended two more. Twenty-six students who admitted buying drugs from the suspect will receive guidance and counseling as their discipline.
Ten others were not disciplined. Mr. Montgomery said they were not connected to the alleged dealer but came forward and admitted smoking marijuana in the past. There are 418 students in the upper school.
There is no evidence of a full-scale drug ring at Gilman, a school founded in 1897 and run by a 40-member Board of Trustees made up of city leaders, including a judge, corporation heads, doctors and lawyers. Students at the $10,000- a-year school go on to universities such as Princeton, Harvard and Brown.
While the small amount of marijuana confiscated pales in comparison with the problems experienced in many city schools, it is the talk on Gilman's 67-acre campus off Roland Avenue, where just last year the headmaster declared war on discourtesy and made civility the theme for the academic year.
School officials have held three student meetings since Friday and sent letters to all parents and trustees.
They said counselors are scheduled to visit and that the school plans to expand its drug-awareness programs.
"They were teen-agers who were experimenting -- not even on the campus," Mr. Montgomery said. "They turned themselves in for Saturday night dalliances. But don't get me wrong. It was wrong. They shouldn't have done it. We will simply not tolerate drugs on the campus. Period."
Mr. Montgomery called city police Friday about 10 a.m. after he concluded his own two-week probe into alleged drug sales being conducted out of a student's locker.
The headmaster cut the lock and found a black film canister containing marijuana, a small pouch containing marijuana, two smoking devices, a portable scale, an electronic pager and $632 in cash, according to the police report.
Police arrested the 16-year-old junior, who was not named by police because of his age, in the lounge of the main building, Carey Hall, as many students watched.
"It was all done so the students could see the repercussion of this," said James S. Riepe, the managing director of T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and president of the Gilman Board of Trustees. "We just felt we had to make a big issue of it."
Afterward, rumors spread throughout the school as top officials held meetings and urged students to uphold the honor code and come forward.
"Tensions are high," said one ninth-grade student interviewed outside of Gilman yesterday, who like a half-dozen others, refused to give his name. "A lot of people are really nervous. I think the headmaster was disappointed in the school community and that this had gone on for so long without anyone doing anything about it."
Other reports filtering out of the school had Mr. Montgomery offering amnesty to students who came forward, while threatening students who did not with suspension or expulsion if they were caught. Mr. Montgomery flatly denied those assertions. "I absolutely did not promise any student that they would be free from disciplinary action," he said. "Just the opposite. I told them that if they come forward, there were no guarantees. I stated that if they came forward, they would not be led out of here in handcuffs."
Mr. Montgomery would not explain why some students were expelled, and others punished less severely.
Police said yesterday their role is finished and that there are no continuing drug probes at the school.
"We have no knowledge of any further problems there," said Northern District Lt. Robert Lassahn, explaining that the arrest "kind of surprised people here too. The Gilman School is not one you hear a lot about for this type of situation. But we know drugs are everywhere."
It is a point echoed by Mr. Montgomery, who called the incidents the most "disheartening moment" in his three years as headmaster, and by Mr. Riepe, who said: "There is nothing particularly unique to Gilman having a group of 16- to 18-year-olds feel the need to experiment from time to time."