Whether a person has a learning disability or not, everyone is treated with respect in Mustang Pals. Mustang Pals allows students to develop friendships outside of the regular day.

“Mustang Pals is a student-led social group where the students plan and participate in different social events/outings,” Mustang Pals Coordinator Jessica Condon said. “Mustang Pals brings students of all ages and abilities together to ‘hang out’ and create new friendships.”

Mustang Pals wants to create an atmosphere that will make students feel comfortable while making new friends. For some, this group is very personal.

“I have a learning disability, and I [was] made fun of it for most of my life,” junior Juliana Leone said. “So it’s nice to actually create friendships for people who have it and [are] still getting made fun of for it because they have no friends whatsoever, and the friends that they do have know that it’s very visible for them.”

Mustang Pals encourages students to join at any point. They are willing to be flexible with a busy schedule as long as a student will be committed.

“Students are able to join whenever,” Leone said. “We already had a match day which is when the students with the disabilities come and meet their pal and everybody just gets to meet each other.”

Mustang Pals may be a new club, but working with students that have different abilities has been an important program in District 214. This club values treating every student with respect, no matter their differences.

“To make this go further is to make people realize how to talk with people who have a disability, how to understand what is going on and how they can improve their attitude towards it,” Leone said.