By Norah Bailey

Hana O’Looney, a junior at Richard Montgomery High School, has been elected as the Student Member of the Board of Education for the 2021-2022 school year. O’Looney’s term will begin on July 1st, 2021. O’Looney won 78.3 percent of the vote, while her opponent, Henry Kaye, also a junior at Richard Montgomery High School, received 21.3 percent of the vote. Nearly 33,000 students voted electronically, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This SMOB election, there was a 25.2 percent increase in voter turnout as opposed to the previous year.

O’Looney plans on diversifying and uplifting the voices of all MCPS students once in office. “I look forward to serving as your 44th SMOB and championing never-before-seen changes in our county,” O’Looney captioned an Instagram post. “Though [my] campaign has ended, our fight for change has just begun.” Her top three goals while in office are to close the opportunity gap, diversify MCPS’s staff and reopen schools safely. In terms of reopening schools, O’Looney wants to protect students' mental and physical health while “keeping virtual learning a permanent option.” She also wants to fight to increase course offerings, extracurriculars and overall curriculum in the Down County Consortium and Northeast Consortium.

O’Looney ran an excellent social media campaign, utilizing TikTok and Instagram as vital sources for spreading her platforms. She posted weekly updates about her campaign process and gained endorsements from fellow student government and advocacy organizations that she featured on her Instagram story, including one from former SMOB and RM graduate Nate Tinbite. “These past four months have been life-changing. During a year of global turmoil and historic crisis, we conquered unprecedented barriers with a virtual campaign,” O’Looney wrote. “Instead of walking your halls and passing out stickers, I attended your zooms and duetted your TikToks.”

Now that the election is behind her, O’Looney will jump head-first into her role as a voting member of the board.