House Speaker Paul Ryan is hugely unpopular, garnering only a 29 percent approval rating. Apparently, 8th graders disapprove of him, too. While on a field trip in Washington, D.C. on Friday, about half of the 8th-grade students from a South Orange Middle School refused to do a photo-op with Ryan. Instead, the nearly 100 students opted to sit in a parking lot across the street while the remaining students took part in the photo op, according to Mashable.
Elissa Malespina, a school librarian and the parent one of the eighth graders who declined the photo op, said that she is proud of her son.
“I am so proud of my son and 1/2 the 8th grade at South Orange Middle School,” Malespina wrote on Facebook. “They went to D.C. on a field trip and toured the Capitol building. The kids had a chance to have their picture taken with Paul Ryan and over half the class choose not to, including my son! What a powerful statement.”
“I can’t take a picture with someone who supports a budget that would destroy public education and would leave 23 million people without healthcare,” Matthew Malespina, a student at the school, told The Village Green.
“It’s not just a picture,” student Matthew told ABC News. “It’s being associated with a person who puts his party before his country.”
“I think that taking the picture represents that you agree with the same political views and I don’t agree with his political views so I chose not to be in it,” eighth grader Wendy Weeks said.
To some of the students, it had to do with Ryan’s association with Donald Trump.
“I didn’t want to be in [the picture] because he believes in most of what Trump believes in,” Louisa Maynard-Parisi, told The Village Green.
Even though their politics might be different from Ryan’s, other students decided to participate.
“I thought it would be interesting to see one of the nation’s lawmakers in person even if I strongly disagree with many of his views,” said Alex Klint, one of the 8th-grader’s said.
Residents weighed in with conflicted feelings.
“I’m sort of torn on this (although each kid has the right to make this choice),” wrote one SOMA resident. “Even though I totally disagree with everything he stands for, he is a legitimately elected official and represents our government at work. Meeting our representatives is an honor for a kid–at least for what the office stands for (even if the person occupying that chair is less than honorable).”
“And I do feel if there had been some conservative school where the kids refused to pose with President Obama, we would have been appalled by that,” the resident added.
Matthew’s mother told the paper, “It is his right as a citizen to do so and I commend him and his fellow students for doing so in a respectful way. Listen to the children they get it.”
Photo by Olivier Douliery via Getty Images.
