By Ashwin Dasgupta and Liam Zeya

A&E Editor and Opinions Editor

With great power comes great responsibility. Even if that power is an illusion, as Ryan McElveen found out on Jan. 6.

Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) dreadful decision to not cancel school on Tuesday came with a barrage of negative publicity for the 13th largest school system in the country.

School officials underestimated meteorologists’ predictions for the wintery precipitation, sending the 170,000+ FCPS students to school in treacherous snowy and icy conditions. By the time the snow ceased in the late morning, one to three inches had accumulated on the ground.

During the school day, FCPS released a statement saying that they “apologize for the difficulties the weather caused,” but chose to keep students in school for the remainder of the day.

Students from across the county made their frustrated voices heard on Twitter. The #closeFCPS hashtag even trended worldwide on the popular social media site, tallying to at least 70,000 tweets using the tag.

One particular FCPS employee, Ryan McElveen, was the target of many of the outraged tweets. In December of the last school year, McElveen rose to Internet stardom after announcing that school was canceled via his Twitter before most students had heard about it from any other source.  FCPS students, who began to associate McElveen with snow days, began to flood Twitter with comical praise for the at-large school board member. McElveen’s follower count also skyrocketed (He currently has over 37,000 followers on the site) and his appearance became sought after at a variety of school events including at McLean’s convocation ceremony last year. He also recently made an appearance at the McLean vs Langley basketball game on Dec. 12, where the board member was flooded by excited fans from both sides.

Although McElveen has no real involvement in the process of canceling school, that didn’t stop many FCPS students from castigating and making fun of their former hero.

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” one FCPS student tweeted about McElveen.

This idea rings true of McElveen’s situation, who once basked in the love and fame of the FCPS student body as nothing more than a charismatic messenger but now is the center of much less desirable attention . Although the barrage of mean spirited tweets directed towards McElveen is totally unwarranted as he had no part in the decision, such a reaction was inevitable. If he wanted to, even jokingly, be the face of FCPS’s snow day cancellations, he should have realized that he would be be the face of FCPS’s snow day blunders as well.