PARENTS: STING UNFAIR TO STUDENTS

BURLINGTON - A community member said Monday night that Alamance County
high school students arrested and suspended for selling drugs to
undercover police officers were treated differently than other
students who faced suspension from school in the past.

"Why are these young men and women being treated differently?" Patsy
Simpson said to about 150 people in Ebenezer United Church of Christ's
gymnasium. She organized the forum for family members of those
arrested in the drug probe.

Simpson outlined what she said were differences between what the
school system's policy calls for and what actually happened.

School officials couldn't be reached for comment Monday
night.

Fifty high school students from five high schools and Sellars-Gunn
Education Center were arrested for selling drugs to undercover
officers who posed as students last fall. Most of the charges were for
peddling small amounts of marijuana, though some students were
arrested for selling heroin, cocaine and various prescription drugs.

Simpson and other speakers called for community members to hold the
school board, school administrators, the sheriff and the district
attorney accountable for what they called the unjust treatment of the
students.

After the students were arrested Feb. 4 at their schools, they were
brought to police stations in Burlington and Graham and the Alamance
County Sheriff's Department to be booked. While there, they met with
principals who told them they had been suspended.

Simpson said the principals required students to say whether they were
guilty of the charges they'd been arrested on. In some cases, she
said, principals even wrote out statements for the students.

Students and their parents can appeal the suspensions, and some of
those appeals have already begun. Some parents, Simpson said, had been
told that they couldn't bring an attorney or other witnesses to the
appeals, which are conducted in some cases by a panel of
administrators. She said school administrators had denied to her that
parents were ever told they couldn't bring a lawyer.

The appeals hearings are closed to the public.

Japonica Beazer said her son's appeal of his long-term suspension was
denied. Beazer's son, formerly a sophomore at Eastern Alamance High
School, is now attending an alternative education program provided by
the Alamance-Burlington School System. Beazer's son, Kevin, played on
the school's basketball team, but is now facing a trial in juvenile
court on felony charges of selling marijuana in August and September.

Kevin's father, Ron Graves, said his son's basketball talent "was
probably his best shot at college."

Graves and Beazer said Kevin told them the undercover officer pushed
him to sell marijuana, in one case refusing to buy it from another
student that Kevin pointed out.

Another speaker, former pro football player and Burlington native Ron
Francis, said the charges against all the students should be reduced
to something less serious, and they should be punished with community
service.

"Ever since that dreadful day I haven't had one moment of sleep or
peace or rest and neither will anybody else until our kids get some
form of justice," he said.

Francis has three grandchildren who attend Eastern Alamance High
School, though none of them was arrested in the undercover operation.

Simpson and Francis said there would be more meetings.

Simpson told the crowd that she had invited school board members and
school administrators to attend. But she didn't tell the crowd that a
school board meeting was scheduled at the same time.

Afterward, she said she knew about the scheduling conflict, but that
the information she had to give to parents was too urgent to wait.