High school class trip to Seattle includes stop at strip club

SPRAGUE — When nine students at Sprague High School took their senior trip to the big city recently, the stops in Seattle included Pike Place Market, the Space Needle and a strip club.

The latter was not on the original itinerary.

Some parents in the small Eastern Washington farm town are outraged that six boys and three girls from the class of 2003 went to Deja Vu Showgirls in Seattle to view exotic dancers last week. Some students went to the club twice in the same day.

All the students were at least 18, so the detour was legal, but Principal Pat Whipple was not amused.

“This was a Sprague High School-sanctioned field trip,” Whipple told columnist Doug Clark of The Spokesman-Review of Spokane in today’s editions. “If they go someplace or do something that is inappropriate to the name of the school, there will be consequences.”

Whipple did not immediately return a telephone call today from The Associated Press.

Sprague is a farm town of 450 people about 30 miles west of Spokane.

The Sprague senior stripper sojourn was detected when the students were late returning to the bus and one of the four chaperones went in search. She asked the manager of nearby Deja Vu to see if any of the students were inside.

Some of the students are not apologizing for the extra sightseeing.

“I don’t really care what people say,” one student told the newspaper. “We’re 18. We didn’t do anything illegal.”

But student Guy Swift did express regret that the Deja Vu detour reflected badly on the teacher who led the trip to Seattle.

“He did give us a lot of trust and free time where we could split up from the group,” Swift, 18, said. “We were selfish, thinking about ourselves.”