Teacher Takes Cheerleaders to Gay Bar

(Butler County, Ohio) A 37-year-old marketing teacher and cheerleading coach at Butler Tech, Lori Epperson, resigned her position Thursday after being investigated for taking four Edgewood High School cheerleaders to a gay male strip club in Dayton.

Butler Tech spokesman, Bill Solazzo, said the female students were all 17 or 18 years old.

According to Solazzo, the girls -- all cheerleaders at Edgewood High School -- had approached the teacher about the strip club idea.

The girls were students in Epperson's marketing class offered in the Edgewood schools through the Butler Tech program. Epperson also previously served as a coach for the district's eighth-grade cheerleaders.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the idea of taking high school kids to a bar, any bar, is exceedingly dumb. Taking them to a strip joint, to boot, is even dumber. I suggest that Epperson was trying to be friends with her students instead of providing adult supervision.

In an April 10 letter, Epperson apologized for taking the girls to the strip joint and explained what happened. She had assured the girls' parents that there would be no drinking and, consequently, obtained their permission.

Once there, she wrote, the girls' hands were stamped marking them as underage. However, the girls went upstairs where they were able to get drinks.

"After about 15 minutes, I went to look for them. They had found someone that was a brother of someone they knew. He bought them shots and cosmopolitans - a very strong drink. I told them we're leaving because they disobeyed me by drinking," she recounted.

One of the girls was "found in the bathroom throwing up" and had to be carried by Epperson to the car. She wrote that she "drove them home, lecturing the whole way."

Butler Tech school administrators will decide on Epperson's status April 21. It's not known whether the cheerleaders will be disciplined.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.