“Eighty percent of life is just showing up.” — Woody Allen

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.

The time finally has come for the Wayland City Council to give up on the noble effort of having a student representative sit in on meetings.

There’s no question that there’s a valid reason for including the youth of the community take part in local government affairs, but there comes a time when the drive to have such a feature is too cumbersome and too difficult to implement. And you can blame good old apathy, a frequent culprit in too many failures to organize something inclusive for the town we live in.

Over the past two years, it has been more than difficult to get young folks to show up at the meetings and present their reports on what’s happening at the schools. Perhaps too many of these kinds of students are busy with other obligations, such as sports, theater, music or other activities.

Yet the student representatives at school board meetings don’t seem to share the problem of just showing up.

During the last dozen years I’ve been covering City Council meetings, I have noticed the student rep portion of the sessions has been hit and miss at best and “they no show up” at worst. It amounts to nothing more than an awkward silence when the that part of the agenda arrives.

It would be too easy to place blame on individuals. Other than apathy, I would suggest that city business also doesn’t seem to attract local youth like school business does.

At any rate, council members over the past several years have taken notice and I remember Mayor Jennifer Antel bemoaning the fact that it’s been difficult to get that student rep, regardless of who he or she is, to make an appearance.

Furthermore, I just don’t see how city officials can be as interested as the school board members are in school students’ news and affairs. Too often what they report when they do show up is old news, an oxymoron.

I am sorry to make this suggestion, but maybe the time has come to drop the student representative feature at City Council meetings, while keeping them in place for Board of Education.