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Eric Lin, a junior from Severna Park High School, will sit as the 50th student member of the Anne Arundel County Board of Education starting in July.
Lin’s election was announced this month following a debate in late April with the other two finalists, Indu Bodala, of Glen Burnie High School, and Taryn Reinhart, of Annapolis High School. .
At the debate, the Severna Park resident identified five priorities that he wants to collaborate with other board members to achieve: modernizing the county dress code; reevaluating the World Classical Languages curriculum; codifying a policy that prohibits homework being assigned on dates where major standardized testing is scheduled; establishing a free school lunch/breakfast policy and attendance policies that are geared toward promoting student mental health.
Lin will be sworn in at 8 a.m. June 29 in the Board of Education headquarters. His first meeting will be on July 12. The livestream of Lin’s swearing-in ceremony will be available on AACPS-TV and the AACPS YouTube page.
During his term, Lin hopes to reform the curriculum requirements for World Classical Languages that he believes are “failing students.” The current curriculum is “outdated and impractical” because it does not focus on students learning to hold interpersonal conversations.
”Talking with a lot of teachers that I’ve had, it seems like we’re really skipping over learning the basics like grammar and you know, those conversational phrases like very basic vocabulary, tenses, , past tense, present tense. Those are the things that we should be focusing on, especially in the beginner levels,” he said.
The 17-year-old plans to sit down with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and “overhaul” the curriculum using feedback from student and teacher surveys.
Lin also wants to address ways the board can prioritize student mental health. One way, he said, would be to establish a policy that no homework be given on the weekend during SAT/ACT test dates and no work assigned during breaks.
“After taking that three-and-a-half-hour-long test, you’re pretty burned out and so not having to go home after school from that and do homework and prepare for the day after would be really nice,” he said. “This goes for the night before the exam as well, not assigning homework the night before those tests so that students can just take a break and be able to get a good night’s rest [and] just relax without having to worry about doing homework is something that I’d like to prioritize.”
Lin said he is prepared to work with and listen to all county stakeholders to make decisions on educational practices that will benefit students. He has experience engaging with the Board of Education through his involvement as the secretary of communications for the Chesapeake Regional Association of Student Councils. He also sat on County Executive Steuart Pittman’s Youth Advisory Committee and participated in the Maryland Association of Student Councils last fall.
‘Not a student representative’
Lin was preceded by 49 student board members, many of whom have sought reforms as voting members. Next year will mark 50 years since the position was established.
The position dates to 1974 when former Anne Arundel state Sen. Robert Pascal, a Republican, introduced a bill allowing the Board of Education to add a student member. The member was selected by the Chesapeake Regional Association of Student Councils and had no voting rights.
Before the bill was enacted, it was difficult to participate in the board’s deliberations, said Jeffery Robinson, the first student board member, who was elected in June 1974.
“Not only did they require you to have a specific purpose to go down and talk with the board, but you also had to take time off to go down to the board during the school day,” Robinson said. “I won’t say that it wasn’t allowed, but I would also suggest that student participation was very limited in those cases.”
Despite not having the ability to vote on board matters, he said that he was “enticed with the opportunity to participate on nearly an equal level with the other board members.”
At the time, student activism was commonly associated with students rebelling against the system to advocate for change, but county students wanted to work within the system to advocate for change, according to Anthony Arend, the second SMOB to be elected to the Anne Arundel County school board.
Arend was the president of the Chesapeake Regional Association of Student Councils at the time Robinson was elected. Arend wanted students to have the right to vote on board matters and was the driving force behind making it happen.
“In the course of a few years, I would say in Anne Arundel County and in the state of Maryland there was a transformation in what student activism meant,” Arend said. “It didn’t mean ‘challenging the man.’ It didn’t mean fighting against the administration; it meant putting on a suit and tie, going to the board meeting, behaving like adults and working with the system.”
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During the 1974 campaign season, Arend attended a tea and met House of Delegates candidate Michael Wagner. After their introduction, Arend asked Wagner if he’d sponsor a bill giving the student representative voting rights Wagner said yes.
After the Democrat was elected in 1975, he co-sponsored House Bill 1239 with Republican Del. Robert Neall.
The bill “flew” through both the House and the Senate, Arend said in an interview with ”Teen Talk” host Camryn Chehreh, on a student-led TV program. However, the legislation hit a roadblock after five of six Board of Education members argued the bill violated a Maryland law that someone cannot serve on the board if they are under the authority of the board.
An article that appeared in the Capital Gazette on April 14, 1975, reported Assistant Attorney General George A. Nilson came to the conclusion that granting a student member full voting rights was legal based on past court opinions in neighboring counties. Following the decision, Arend and his team still had to persuade former Gov. Marvin Mandel to not veto the bill.
The Evening Sun
At a bill hearing, Mandel asked Robinson if a student representative having a vote would have made a difference in his participation on the board. Robinson admitted his vote wouldn’t have had much influence, but he would have been more outspoken on certain issues if he had the power.
“I probably would have been more outspoken than I was just because the reality is that when you are treated as an equal, you probably also participate at a much higher level of quality in your debate and conversation,” he said.
On the morning of May 15, 1975, Mandel signed the bill into law.
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The following year, Arend ran for the student seat and won.
Five decades later, Robinson still feels the student vote is an important part of the job.
“That was my response to [Mandel], and that’s what I still feel today,” Robinson said. “The equality of the vote gives the student member a much stronger interest in providing input into the process.”