Alan Webber
Entrepreneur Alan Webber, 69, grew up in St. Louis and has worked in government and business and run nonprofit organizations. He moved to Santa Fe with his wife about 15 years ago and says the city is now home.
Question: What sort of activities were you involved in as a teenager, and what sort of trouble did you get into?
Answer: In high school, I was a straight arrow. … As a teen, I played football, basketball and baseball. I worked on the high school newspaper. I participated in drama and acted in plays, and I had a pretty intense academic load, which didn’t leave a lot of time for causing trouble. And I had summer jobs every summer. The only way I caused trouble was when I was running the high school newspaper. I went to a school that was all boys. … We were at the low end of the economic spectrum. It was largely for the well-off children of the corporate elite. But I ended up becoming the editor of the school newspaper in my senior year, and I ended up writing editorials about how we needed to admit girls and integrate with African-American students. And the guy who was the faculty adviser would come to me and say, “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you just leave?” and I would say, “Well it’s not that I don’t like it here. I like it here a lot, I just think we should have co-education and integrate the school.”
Gen Next: What are the issues impacting teens in Santa Fe today that you feel the city should address?
Answer: It’s a small town, so if you’re looking to spread your wings and fly, how do you do that? I think some things are always going to be the same for kids growing up. How do you figure out who you are? How do you stand out without standing out too much? How do you fit in without compromising too much? I think the biggest challenge for Santa Fe and for young people is there’s nothing to do in Santa Fe. … Does that mean there are not enough music venues? Or there aren’t enough paintball places? Because if the issue is, “Why don’t we have a paintball venue?” and, “Why don’t we have more places for young people to schedule their own music that they want to put on?” then that’s fixable. It shouldn’t be that hard to do.
Question: What reponsibility does the mayor have to the city’s youth, even those who are not old enough to vote?
Answer: The job of the city is to try to make life better for the people who live here. There is a great concern, which is correct, that if we don’t listen and respond to young people’s concerns, we are going to end up losing generation after generation of Santa Feans who will grow up here and then go somewhere else.
Question: What does Santa Fe’s public education system lack, and what can the city do to help?
Answer: We have to upgrade education for everybody. This is not a new issue. If you study education policy, there is a direct correlation between poverty and educational performance. Young people who come from poorer families have a tougher time receiving a good education. We know that kids in New Mexico who come out of a poor family, often with a single parent as the head of the household, usually a mom trying to make ends meet, on the first day that child goes to kindergarten, they are a year and a half behind. So there has to be a way we invest in education. We need early childhood education for every kid. It has to be quality and well managed. It can’t be baby-sitting.
I think the mayor’s job is to be a huge advocate for education. A lot of what the mayor gets to do is set the conversation about education and how we talk about it. I would also have someone in my office who was an educational liaison, because while the mayor doesn’t get to decide what goes on in the schools, the kids who go to school in the morning are Santa Fe kids the rest of the day. If they wake up hungry, that’s on the mayor. If they live in an abusive family, that’s on the city. If they wake up homeless in their car, that’s on the city.
Aurelia Valente is a senior at Santa Fe High School. Contact her at aureliatanei@yahoo.com.