Imagine you are walking in the halls of an ordinary high school. What kind of things would you hear students talking about? Larry Hensley-Marschand, principal of Southport High School, does this every day. His experiences before 1998 were often unpleasant.

"A couple of teachers actually stood around the corner of one particular hallway and counted the number of times they heard the f-word in a six-minute passing period between classes; I guess it was something like 30 times," he explained. "The feeling was that students just felt it was no big deal anymore, and they didn't seem to really care whether the teachers heard them."

Hensley-Marschand, who has been an educator in Perry Township Schools for 29 years, decided to create a policy that bans profanity.

In the summer of 1998, while beginning his second year as principal, Hensley-Marschand revealed his plan to eliminate inappropriate language from the school. The policy does not include a list of banned words. "If we put out a list of 500 words, student will find 501, 502 and 503. There will always be an exception out there," he said.

"The kids know what kind of words we're talking about, we know what kind of words we're talking about, and we'll take each case on an individual basis."

The policy is not printed in the student handbook but is explained in a separate mailing to students, Hensley-Marschand said. For a first offense, the student's parents are contacted and told exactly what the teen said. For a second offense, the student can receive two detentions. Third- and fourth-time offenders receive in-school suspensions, while fifth-time offenders can receive an out-of-school suspension.

No student has been suspended because of profanity, the principal said, and no parent or student has complained about the policy. "I believe that by far, the majority of the students have adjusted very well."

Two Southport freshmen do accept the ban. Alex Booton and Stephanie Bingham, both 15, support the policy, although they said it's not widely publicized.

Alex says she doesn't think her parents even know about the policy, although she likes it: She and her family think cussing is inappropriate.

"It makes me upset when people cuss. All it is is just words, but it offends me a lot because of the way they're using it," she said.

Because of religious reasons, Stephanie says, she doesn't curse. She supports the ban but says the policy needs to be printed and posted so students can read it.

"It's just something that the principal and teachers have told us. They kind of announce it, but they don't have it written down, because I looked in the Signpost (the Southport student handbook), and they didn't have anything written about it," she said.

While Alex hasn't seen anyone who has gotten in trouble for swearing at school, Stephanie has. "Yesterday in one of my classes was the first time I've ever seen anyone get in trouble for it," she said. "They got written up and sent down to the dean."

Valerie Hodges, 16, a sophomore at Southport, opposes the policy. "I'm against the policy because I think that it kind of goes along with our freedom of speech and stuff, you know? There are lots of my teachers that have to catch themselves in class so they don't cuss -- like our teachers are doing it, and we know it."

Valerie isn't affected by the ban, because she says she'd never cuss in school. But she said Southport's no-tolerance policy is doing anything but working.

"You can walk down the hallways at Southport and hear every other kid cussing. You just can't really tell which kid it is because we stand in groups in the hallways. So they can't really do anything about it. And then, lots of times the teachers don't even hear."

Valerie has seen some kids disciplined for cursing. "Lots of kids that get in trouble for cussing, they're the ones who don't care, so they'll cuss a teacher out to their faces," she said.

Hensley-Marschand believes the policy is working, as evidenced by the drop in the number of students being sent to the dean for disrespectful behavior. Although he is pleased, he isn't so naive to think that profanity isn't ever used in the halls of Southport.

He hopes the faculty has made an impression on the students. "Using profanity is a choice, and it's a wise choice to eliminate as much profanity as you can from your conversations and speech, whether you're in the classroom or at a job," he says.

Hensley-Marschand says the ban on swearing encourages students to show respect to teachers and other students.

REPORTERS: Jenny Hoffman, 12; Gabrielle Bibeau, 12; Christine Beyer, 11; and Andrea Phillips, 12.