An eighth-grade student who decided to sit out a group photo last month with Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanKenosha will be a good bellwether in 2020 At indoor rally, Pence says election runs through Wisconsin Juan Williams: Breaking down the debates MORE (R-Wis.) penned an op-ed on Monday, saying she decided she was not going to be used as a "publicity stunt."

The eighth-grade student at South Orange Middle School, Jordan McCray-Robinson, wrote an op-ed published Monday in The Village Green, a local New Jersey newspaper, defending her decision. The student said many schools visit Washington each year, but "our trip was different."

"Our 8th grade had the opportunity to take a picture with the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan," she wrote in the piece.

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"The 8th graders also had the option not to participate and I decided not to take the picture as did with many others of my grade . I decided I wasn’t going to be used as a publicity stunt."

Nearly 100 eighth-grade students from New Jersey decided to sit out the group photo opportunity last month with Ryan during a class trip to Washington. The students from South Orange Middle School who declined to take part in the picture opted to sit in a parking lot while their peers took part in the photo op. Ryan posted the photo on her Instagram page.

McCray-Robinson in the op-ed cited comments posted on Ryan's Instagram photo, in which the students who chose not to take part in the photo were criticized as "losers" who were "brainwashed."