MCR Officer: Hana O'Looney

Newly appointed Vice President of MCR, Hana O’Looney is facing an unprecedented challenge this year that former officers never had to worry about. With the recent news that the first semester of this school year is to be held entirely online, it would be reasonable suspicion to suggest that quarantine may come at a cost of productivity for the organization. However, in Hana’s view, the transition to fully-online interactions has done quite the contrary.

An avid participant in Shakespeare club, the debate and forensics public speaking teams, and the nonprofit organization “The Free Theatre,” Hana O’Looney has a lot to bring to the table. Hana served as the deputy chief of staff for MCR in her freshman year. She also served as a community relations director, the co-chair for MoCo’s EmpowHer, and a director of MoCo for change member outreach since 2019. Hana’s love for the community and willingness to pioneer issues that she is passionate about are not only what got her into MCR but acted as a guiding light throughout her student government career.

Despite the fact that the school year has yet to begin, Hana and the team have already made substantial progress--most notably with this year’s summer workshops. Providing a wide range of interactive lessons on various topics, these highly informative and engaging summer workshops started this year with a bang. The team organized workshops ranging from email writing to testifying; all summarized in articles elsewhere on the MCR website. According to Hana, “We’ve gotten so much positive feedback from students across the state letting us know that they have learned a lot from our workshops and will be doing similar initiatives in other counties[.]”

Hana’s priorities for MCR this year are battling anti-racism in our educational system, protecting sexual assault survivors, and securing free menstrual hygiene products in bathrooms throughout the county--an ambition that she testified publicly about to the Montgomery County Board of Education in 2019. When asked about how she plans to tackle the issue of racism in education, Hana said

“hiring more black and brown educators and psychologists, diversifying our curriculum, and implementing more required courses on anti-racist topics such as implicit bias.” Regarding her latter ambitions, Hana said that she plans on “ensur[ing] that survivors of sexual assault in our school system are believed and protected, and secur[ing] free menstrual hygiene products in all of our bathrooms.”

Despite the effects of quarantine, online events thus far have not only been extremely convenient for attendees but have given event hosts more flexibility through increased resources and communication functions. Hana is very excited about this year’s team and is more than ready to fly full sail and tackle issues that she believes have faced this county for far too long.

Written by Zach Poe

Published by PR Department