Richard Montgomery sophomore Alan Xie will assume his duties as the Student Member of the Board July 1. Xie received 73.64 percent of the 64,878 votes from middle and high school students across the county, the largest margin in history. He talked with the Black & White about his campaign success and what he thinks are important issues for the upcoming year.
Black & White: A lot of students who vote for the SMOB every year have no idea what they’re voting for. What exactly do you do as SMOB?
Alan Xie: It’s not a spectator position; I’m involved in discussions of the BOE. I help lobby the County Council, organize rallies and promote community involvement through phone calls, e-mails, and letters. I also attend board meetings, MCR-SGA (high school county SGA), and MCJC (middle school county SGA) meetings. People always criticize SMOBs for not doing anything because we always promise cell phone rights, iPod rights and open lunches. We try to do that, but we get overtaken by budget issues and day-to-day managing of the board.
B&W: How did you get people to vote for you?
AX: I got 30,000 stickers, which cost about $360, within campaign limits. I also made a Facebook group, but I made it before the preliminary elections, so the momentum from March to April really helped.
B&W: You visited about 15 schools across the county during the campaign season. Did you see a discrepancy in the voting statistics between schools you visited and schools you didn’t visit?
AX: I visited Wootton and I ended up getting about 58 percent of the vote. I didn’t visit Quince Orchard, but I got about the same. I suppose it really doesn’t make that much of a difference whether or not you visit because students don’t have an expectation that you will. In the end, what it really comes down to is how well you can network and how well you do in the video.
B&W: Was winning by such a huge margin a surprise?
AX: I was looking at the margin of votes, and the only schools I didn’t get a majority of the votes in were Damascus and Baker Middle School, both of which Nick attended. I was really surprised. Tim [Hwang, the current SMOB] told me that the highest margin before me was him, and he won about 58 percent. I brought that up to 73 percent, which was ridiculous. I can’t even believe it.
B&W: Are you excited for next year?
AX: Next year’s not looking too great. The County Council decided to put on furloughs [mandatory unpaid leave] so we’re going to sue because they’re not allowed to do that. They’re allowed to add money back into the budget, but they can’t take away money. We looked at the laws and we figured that if we sue them, this will probably go our way in court because if we have to take these cuts, then we don’t get state aid and we have to make cuts that we’re not going to be ready for.
B&W: What’s your most important initiative for this year, besides the budget?
AX: I’m definitely going to try to get SMOB voting rights. We have a broad range now, but what we really need is the budget. We tried to get a law passed to get the budget vote, but it didn’t work. If we had more time this year to lobby the general assembly, we would’ve gotten it.
