The Student Council rolls out their final plans for the 2016-2017 school year.

With the year winding down, the Student Council has come up with their last few events from now until the end of the year and have also elected next year’s Student Council officer and representatives.

Before Spring Break, the Student Council worked through the election process. Because of this, March had fewer activities.

“The month of March tends to be a down time for us in regards to activities because there is a lot that goes into candidate preparation,” Student Council Moderator Dr. Joan Dlugos said.

One activity the Student Council hosted in the month of March was the Activity Schedule Soccer Tournament, which President Rich Heany thought went really well.

The details and qualifications for the election process are quite rigorous, as the Student Council focuses on making sure that all of the right candidates are chosen, according to Dlugos. The processes are different for executive officers and class representatives.

The representatives must complete a series of tasks, which involve various members of the Malvern community, as well as work the candidate must do; they also must do well in school.

“Students complete a packet of information which involves essays, recommendations from teachers, and signatures from various administrators,” Dlugos said. “On our end, we check on [the candidates’] conduct at Malvern, and also students have to have a 3.0 GPA.”

For the Executive Board, the process is a little different.

“Executive officers also have to fill out a packet and get signatures, but they also go through a pretty stringent speech editing process,” Dlugos said. “They write various drafts of their speeches, and we have a teacher panel come in and give them input and feedback on their more developed drafts. We then have a couple practices in Duffy [Arts Center] before the speeches.”

Heany went on to describe some of the Studco events in the near future.

“On May 13th, we have the [2nd annual] Run for Joy, which is a 5k. Mr. Legner is working with us on that too,” he said.

Now, the attention turns mostly to next year’s executives, who will be active in the next couple of weeks.

“The upcoming execs for next year will be sending out a student survey in the next couple days, and we will be taking a look at the information we get back,” Dlugos said. “We will look at what the different classes liked this year and what kind of changes and ideas the students have for next year.”

The last Student Council meeting will be held on May 2, mostly to honor Heany and the other seniors who haved served Malvern so well this year. All in all, Heany believes this year has been extremely successful, and he has thoroughly enjoyed serving as Student Council President.

“It was definitely a great experience working with everybody to come up with new ideas, and seeing how the school reacts to things that we’ve never done before, like the Color Run, or Family Feud,” Heany said. “It’s cool to see how people like something that you just tried out, and it’s fun to see them enjoy it. As a whole, I thought it was a great year overall.”

Dlugos agreed with Heany and thought that this year’s student council served Malvern very well. She spoke on behalf of herself and Science Teacher and Student Council Co-Moderator Mrs. Laurie Peslak.

“It was a really brave group to try the new things they did. Starting something big like Family Feud is a big undertaking,” Dlugos said. “The executive board was a really solid group in that they prepared things well and took things through their various steps. Ms. Peslak and I couldn’t be happier.”