Three students at the Sunnybrook Christian Academy, a private Christian school in San Antonio, TX, were suspended recently for attending a Backstreet Boys [ tickets ] concert. The students--two at high-school level, one at junior high-school level--were sent home for violating a school policy which forbids dancing and "involvement in inappropriate music," school administrator Trudie Perez said. The students were allowed to return to school the next day.

The 20-year-old policy, which is included in a handbook issued to all parents who enroll their children in the K-12, nondenominational school, covers students' behavior at school, home and elsewhere, Perez said. Students sign a pledge acknowledging the moral guidelines, which also state that failure to comply could result in disciplinary action or an ''invitation to withdraw from the school.''

Perez said that ''inappropriate music'' contains ''lyrics that are contrary to Biblical standards, such as sexual lyrics that would encourage pre-marital sex.'' When asked if Backstreet Boys' music contained such material, Perez said, ''That's my understanding.''

Perez claimed that one of the suspended high-school students, Jason Trejo, knew the rules but ''choose to make a big to-do of it. I guess he thought if he thumbed his nose at us and went to the press, we would back down on our policy. But this has been an established policy for twenty years, and he has been in our academy for two-and-a-half years, so it's not as though it were a new policy and he were not aware of it... He just has a problem with rules.''

Perez alleged that Trejo's lack of obedience even extended to a maverick attitude toward facial hair. ''Another one of our rules is that you need to be cleanly shaven... He comes to school many times unshaven, and we have to tell him.''