Equality
THE FIGHT FOR By Avery Lowry & Kendell Simpson
ONE NHS SOPHOMORE PLANS TO CHANGE THE WORLD, ONE SIGNATURE AT A TIME The world today is an absolute mess — everybody is on edge and it seems as if one thing after another goes wrong. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, people are left to question their daily life and how it has been impacted by the pandemic. For one Noblesville High School (NHS) sophomore, Tyler Ashby, the one issue that seemed to loom over his head was the minimum wage.
While this unhinged world only continues to grow more and more chaotic, Ashby strives to turn a wrong into its long-overdue right. And so, he is working to establish awareness through a petition to solve the issue presented by Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which states that employers can pay employees with disabilities less than the minimum wage simply due to their disability. Ashby was inspired to start this change by a family member who is bound to be affected by this issue later on in his life if no change is made.
38 Special Needs Living • July 2021
“I have a little brother with Down syndrome and so I’m a little bit more aware about the problems going on in the disability community and what discrimination [people with disabilities] face that the average person doesn’t,” Ashby said, “[In fact,] my friends didn’t even know that this was a law.” Ashby’s relationship with his brother isn’t much different from any other sibling relationship. “We’re brothers [so] we fight and pick on each other, but at the end of the day, we love each other and I want what’s best for him — what’s going to get him far in life,” Ashby said. With the economic crisis that COVID-19 has caused, the minimum wage has become an issue that is being discussed more than ever. “Minimum wage is a subject that’s on a lot of people’s minds and it’s [very prevalent] within the media, so [I figured] I might as well put in my two cents. At the very least, [I want to] let people know about this [and ideally] get it fixed,” Ashby said. Ellie Payne, a longtime friend of Ashby, who is a member of the NHS Best Buddies Program as well as a member of the NHS Leadership Chapter, attests to the capability of students who have disabilities here at NHS.
