A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by 12 Westminster High School students who were barred from extracurricular activities because they attended a party where other teens were drinking alcohol.

Carroll Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold ruled yesterday that the case was not his to decide -- yet. The students must go through the Carroll County Board of Education and the State Board of Education.

"If the Courts did not allow these actions to follow their legislatively mandated route and intervened as a matter of course, chaos would reign in the schools of this county," Arnold wrote.

William H. Hyde, Carroll's school superintendent, said last night that he was pleased with the ruling.

"The matter is coming back to the point where students and citizens can exhaust the administrative remedies through the board," Hyde said. "The Board of Education will hear it as quickly as possible."

The 12 students and their lawyer expressed disappointment. "He essentially denies us a remedy," said Thomas M. Wood IV, lawyer for brothers Matthew and Nicholas Farver and the other 10 students, all of whom say they were not drinking at the party and left soon after they noticed alcohol.

They were barred for 45 days from extracurricular activities, based on school policy that takes away that privilege whether students were drinking or in "close proximity" to underage drinking.

Four other students who filed appeals with the superintendent were exonerated after administrators deemed they left the party in a timely manner, although the policy does not specify how soon a student must leave.

The students will ask the school board for an expedited hearing, Wood said, but by the time those hearings are held, they will have lost the chance to participate in several games and club events. Senior Nicole Litchfield testified that she will miss a state convention of a marketing club though she paid for it in advance.

According to State Board of Education spokesman Ronald Peiffer, an appeal to the state board would have to be filed within 30 days of the local school board's decision. It can often take another 60 days for an appeal to go before the state board, he said.

One of Wood's clients, senior Billy Arnold, has filed an appeal and received a packet from the board requesting a number of forms to be completed and giving the superintendent 10 days to respond.

"I'm just disappointed," said Nicholas Farver, a senior who could miss half the baseball season.

Arnold criticized school officials, admonishing them to provide "clarification of their policies," and said "the results of this case may not appear to have resulted in fairness to some of the students."

"It should not deter them from appealing this decision if they are inclined to do so," Arnold wrote.

Edmund O'Meally, the lawyer for the school board, argued in court that the students did not request an "expedited" appeal from the school board before going to court. He said yesterday that he did not know whether the board would expedite the cases.

Arnold's decision referred to court decisions that establish extracurricular activities as a privilege, not a right, and set the local school board as the body to decide affairs of the school system.

He wrote that had the students been suspended from class, a more protected right than extracurricular activities, he might have had justification to issue an injunction.

Patricia Farver, mother of Nicholas and Matthew, said she felt Arnold's decision, and the testimony in court, vindicated the students by showing the policy is unclear.

"That's what I was looking for, to make a point that things are not all together over there," she said. "The policy is not clear."

Pub Date: 3/23/99