An 18-year-old student cited following a water balloon prank at Minot High School-Magic City Campus on May 16 pleaded not guilty Wednesday to disorderly conduct and asked Minot Municipal Court Judge Mark Rasmuson for a court trial.

Xavier Mason Falcon, who had just turned 18 on the day of the water balloon fight, is charged with a Class B misdemeanor in Minot Municipal Court that carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail and $1,500 in fines. Two 17-year-old boys were charged in juvenile court with disorderly conduct.

Judge Rasmuson set a court trial for 9 a.m., June 22. That is the day he said that Minot School Resource Officer Caisee Sandusky is available to testify.

Falcon and the two younger boys are accused of lobbing about four water balloons at staff and students during the second school lunch period on May 16 and then being “loud, boisterous, and disruptive” when they were ordered to go to the school office, according to a probable cause affidavit Sandusky wrote and filed with the municipal court. She wrote that school assistant principal Harlan Johnson asked her what the boys could be cited with and Sandusky told him they could be cited for “disorderly conduct.”

“At least one student slipped and fell because of the water,” said Superintendent Mark Vollmer on Wednesday.

Vollmer said the student wasn’t hurt badly, but the water on the floor did create an unsafe situation.

Vollmer said he is limited in what he can say about what disciplinary action was taken because of student privacy laws.

Some students on Facebook have claimed that many Magic City Campus students were suspended last week after they posted memes on social media ridiculing the school resource officer. Others claimed that the boys involved would not be allowed to walk at graduation.

“This event will in no way prevent them from graduating,” said Vollmer. “This has nothing to do with graduation or with their participation in graduation.”

The actions of the high school administrators have attracted wide criticism from students and others in the community over the past week. As of Wednesday afternoon, an online petition asking for the charges to be dropped against the three boys had 1,703 signatures.

Comments on the petition criticize school administrators for bringing charges against the boys for a senior prank instead of handling it in-house with detention or suspension. Blogger Rob Port wrote at the Say Anything Blog this week that the administrators overreacted by calling in the police. “What they did was naughty,” he wrote. “Treating it like a crime is absurd.”

Like many large school districts, the Minot Public School District has police officers assigned to its high school campuses as school resource officers. Sandusky has an office at Magic City Campus.

Port expressed the concern that employing a resource officer makes it more likely that more kids will be criminally charged for incidents that in past would have been handled as purely disciplinary matters by school administrators.

Vollmer said that he has spoken with school administrators and with district patrons about the incident and the district is open to a dialogue about how incidents are handled. Their goal is to deal “fairly and appropriately” with students when they determine how best to respond to incidents, he said.

“We just want to move forward,” said Vollmer, and have a beautiful graduation ceremony on Sunday.