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Pranksters nominate girl for homecoming queen and get their comeuppance

A homecoming prank played on Michigan high school sophomore Whitney Kropp, is turned around. Her tormenters' comeuppance is a community rallying to give her free dinner, photos, hair and nail design, shoes, gown, and tiara for Saturday's dance.

  • By Associated Press

| West Branch, Mich.

A Michigan community is trying to make things right after a 16-year-old girl was named to a high school homecoming court as part of an apparent prank.

Whitney Kropp told WNEM-TV she felt betrayed after some of her classmates at West Branch's Ogemaw Heights High School suggested that her selection announced this month at the 800-student school was a joke. She said she had been picked on in the past, but it intensified afterward.

"I thought I wasn't worthy at Ogemaw Heights at all," she said.

As word spread, however, community members rallied behind the sophomore. She's expected to appear at Friday's homecoming football game. And The Detroit News reports businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her hair and nails, and dress her in a gown, shoes, and a tiara for Saturday's dance.

(In a similar incident in Pacifc, Mo., the motives of fellow students who voted into a highs school homecoming court a teen with attention deficit disorder and conditions that have her lagging soccially and without friends are being questions. Rickie and Tonya Tanner wanted to feel excitement when their 15-year-old came home with the news she'd been chosen for the homecoming court, but they say, deep down, they felt something wasn't right. Administrators at Pacific High School in the Meramec Valley School District in Missouri are now investigating  the intentions of sophomores who voted for homecoming court members.)

Whitney's mother Bernice Kropp said the support has helped make a bad situation right in the community about 140 miles northwest of Detroit.

"This was something that was really awful, could have ended awful, and because so many people came together, it just turned right around," she said.

Jamie Kline, started a Facebook support page, which drew hundreds of messages of encouragement. Shannon Champagne, and another beauty salon worker offered their services and asked other businesses to do the same. And Donny Winter, an Ogemaw Heights graduate, made a YouTube video to show his support.

RELATED: 5 bullying myths – what you don't know

"Bullying cannot be resolved by silence, it has to be resolved by actually stating what's happening and actually saying it's wrong," Winter said.

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