School, Girl Battle Over Coed Shower

A high school valedictorian, stripped of her honor by school officials after a shower with several male students she insists was just "good clean fun", is taking the school to court for what she considers overzealous punishment.

Last month, senior Leslie Shorb pulled all her clothes off and jumped into a shower in the boy's locker room along with five naked male classmates.

She did it "for the heck of it, honestly," she told The Early Show Co-anchor Braynt Gumbel on Thursday.

"I didn't do it to prove a point or do anything like that," she said.

Powers High School officials in southwestern Oregon didn't think the bare-all coed shower stunt was funny, nor very becoming behavior of a co-valedictorian representative of the school.

As punishment, school officials suspended Shorb for 10 days and took away her privilege of addressing her graduating class of 16 at the commencement ceremony. She also was banned from after-school activities, the senior prom and the senior trip to Mexico.

But the final insult, Shorb said, and the reason the 18-year-old will take her argument to court, was when her valedictorian standing was yanked.

"I thought I would be given punishment, but like three days of in-school suspension. I had no idea that it was going to be this severe," said Shorb. "I definitely wasn't expecting being stripped of my valedictorian status."

The reason for the April 11 shower incident is a major point of contention between Shorb and her co-valedictorian – who also happens to be her cousin, Anna Shorb.

After Anna leaked the details of the locker-room shower party to school officials, Shorb initially claimed she did it because she wanted to show supervision was lacking at the high school.

Anna contested her cousin's argument and Shorb since has said the nude encounter actually was a harmless prank.

But Shorb's shoulder-shrugging defense of the skin-baring affair has turned many in the community against her and her antics.

The Herald, a daily newspaper in nearby Everett, Ore., took an editorial stab on May 5 at the teen's decision to challenge her high school.

"One might surmise the only lack of supervision in this young woman's life is that of parental and self. Shorb's behavior epitomizes the negative stereotype of teens today - that of self-indulgent, reckless youth with the moral sense of shrubbery.

"It will be difficult for her to earn people's respect after this, if that's even what she wants. Then again, perhaps she'll follow in the footsteps of America's favorite millionaire bride, Darva Conger, and prove her point all the way to Hugh Hefner's mansion."

The school superintendent, who also is the principal, would not comment, saying he is prohibited by law from talking about student records or disciplinary actions.

Shorb and the five boys, also punished by being banned from extracurricular activities, claim there was no hank-panky in the shower. And since Powers is a small town with about 600 residents and they've all known each other since childhood, they said the clothes-less encounter is no big deal.

In fact, Shorb says the sextet had skinny-dipped together in nearby lakes and streams when they were younger.

As part of her defense, the teen-ager's attorney contends the girl's locker room was without soap at the time so she "went down to borrow some soap" from the boy's shower.

David Hans Schmidt said he will file a temporary restraining order in an Oregon court against the school board to seek immediate re-instatement of her title as co-valedictorian.

"Nowhere in the history of jurisprudence within a school set have they gone to this extreme amount of punishment that they've handed down in this situation," said Schmidt, who also represented infamous ice skating Olympian Tonya Harding and currently lists Paula Jones, President Clinton's accuser, as a client.

He added, "It's a material right. It's not a privilege as they're trying to portray it. This is a right that she won on the merit of her grade point average."

Shorb, whose grade point average hovers near a perfect 4.0, has received a scholarship to attend Oregon State University and said she plans to enroll for this fall.

Asked if the university has reconsidered accepting her as a student due to her recent notoriety, Shorb said, "They haven't sent me any denial or anything like that."

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