The Scarborough Land Conservation Trust has been working with Campfire U.S.A. to buy the development rights for Camp Ketcha’s 130 acres in Scarborough.

While Laurene Swaney, the president of the trust, and Atheline Wagner, the president of Camp Ketcha’s Board of Directors,

said the negotiations are still in the early stages, they believe the two groups would be able to come to an agreement that would benefit the town and the camp.

If the deal goes through, Camp Ketcha’s land would expand the undeveloped land the trust has protected in that part of town.

Camp Ketcha’s land borders the Libby River Farm, a 120-acre property the trust purchased in 1997. The deal would also signal a new era of cooperation between the camp and land conservation groups.

One Cape Elizabeth High School student has been suspended after coming to the school’s Homecoming Dance drunk and getting sick, according to Principal Jeff Shedd. The administration is also looking into the possibility that the student was not alone.

“There are unconfirmed reports of others,” Shedd said.

Three students have been suspended from Scarborough High School after two of them were caught under the influence of a prescription drug stolen by the third from her mother.

On Sept. 27, two male students came to school “impaired,” according to Detective Sgt. Rick Rouse. They had taken medication belonging to the mother of a female friend of theirs, who had stolen it.

All of the students are aged 14 or 15, Rouse said, and were charged with possession of illegal drugs.

To a soundtrack of “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies, Cape parents walked into the middle school cafetorium on three different occasions last week to get their first real look at the seventh-grade laptop program.

While most of the parents were impressed, significant concerns remain, though not in the educational aspects of the computers.

Rather, parents are worried about increased liability if their children take the laptops home and damage them. The laptops are worth up to $1,300, with the monitor screen alone costing $1,000 to replace.

The meetings, required by the state before a school district can send laptops home with students, were well attended, according to middle school Principal Nancy Hutton. Cape was one of the first towns in the state to get the laptops to the students earlier this school year, and is one of the first to have parent meetings as well, Hutton said.

Every Thursday evening the gym at Eight Corners School is filled with people dancing to the sound of caller Kip Moulton. Square dancing is alive and well in Scarborough thanks to the Mix’n Mingle Club.

The Mix’n Mingle Club was born four years ago when three separate clubs from Saco, Scarborough and Westbrook joined forces. Peggy Foster, one of the officers of the Mix’n Mingle Club, said it had become too expensive for the individual clubs to rent halls and sponsor dances and that attendance was down, so it made sense to merge all the clubs into one group.

Helping town taxpayers and budding firefighters, the Scarborough Fire Department’s live-in student program is entering its 16th year this fall.

Started in 1986 by then-Fire Chief Robert Carson and firefighter Don Jackson, the program allows students in the fire science course at Southern Maine Technical College to live rent free in the town’s fire stations, in exchange for going on fire and rescue calls and doing maintenance and cleaning work around the station.

Editor’s note: Looking Back is a weekly column including news items reported 10 years ago in The Current, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2011.

Mike Price, Ryan Colpitts and Mike McLaughlin were part of a large and vocal group of students showing their support for the Red Storm football team during its homecoming game in this photo from Oct. 10, 2002.