In recent news, a teenager who has down syndrome has been edited out of her cheerleader picture and is heartbroken from being excluded from her photo.
Morgyn Arnold, 14, poses with her cheerleading squad located at Shoreline Junior High School. The school had selected a photo that did not contain her appearance for the school yearbook.
Arnold’s older sister, Jordyn Poll, used the social media platform, Facebook, in order to call out the school and writes in a post: “I hope that no one ever has to experience the heartbreak that comes when the person they love comes home from school devastated and shows them that they’re not in the picture with their team.”
She explains that her little sister, despite her differences, served as the cheer squad’s manager and spent a hefty amount of time dedicated towards the team. To be left out of the official picture had broken her heart into pieces.
Administrators from the junior high school had released a comment saying that the picture they selected without Morgan was a “mistake.”
Poll claims that this isn’t the first time that her sister has dealt with incidents such as these. She has been excluded a second time in the last three years she’s been in the school.
Last time, she had been excluded out of the class list and the school administration was notified. The answer they got was as “ignorant as the photo.” They had said that they didn’t know what what they were expecting of them, and Poll responds that “you can be better and I expect better.”
Later, the sister adds onto her post that this is not a way to critique the other cheerleaders, wanting her point to be held across.
“Please listen and hear my clearly – these girls are not the problem. Please stop shaming them!! They were kind, inclusive, and they are Morgyn’s friends.” She appeared later on Fox 13 to say why she had chosen to call the school out.
She comments that “Morgan is my very best friend, and my heart was broken for her to experience this kind of exclusion. I felt like at some point it was on me to say something.”