Profile: Gavin Heaney and his senior student council experience

Gavin Heaney isn’t the type of person you expect to see on Student Council. If you know Gavin, seeing him actually make it

onto Student Council is something that is surprising and makes you say “Oh wow, that’s interesting.” His joint campaign with Maz Kurtz for Student Council did the same thing at the end of his junior year.

On Apr. 23, 2018 Gavin Heaney began campaigning on Instagram and Twitter. Gavin created campaign specific  accounts with the intention of gaining supporters and swaying votes in his favor.

Gavin can be seen in pictures with several different teachers, shaking hands and showing support for the Heaney campaign. Something else notable is that Max and Gavin were some of the only students to run a campaign together, while mostly everyone else ran alone.

There was no one else doing anything as interesting as Gavin for their campaign, and the surprising thing is that he actually won. For these reasons I decided to talk to Gavin outside of class to pick his brain and talk about his experience on Student Council.

Why did you run for Student Council?

College apps of course. Haha that’s just a joke but no I thought it would be really fun to run and I wanted to have a say in Prom and bring new things to Milford like Senior Oscar Night.

Were you surprised when you won?

I was a little surprised, I expected it a little but I didn’t expect to beat Connor Meadows.

What do you do on the Student Council?

I come up with ideas for different events and how to make them fun for the class and school.

What is your position in the Student Council hierarchy?

I’m just a representative, Olivia Mouradian is the leader. Like we don’t have an official leader but it’s clear that she takes the leadership position. We’re a really different group of people and she’s a big reason why we can come together and work together so well.

Was Senior Oscar Night the first event held by Student Council?

Yes, it was Olivia Mouradian’s idea.

What was your role in Senior Oscar Night?

Obviously I hosted it and was in charge of onstage stuff, but I was also in charge of a lot of the imagination and ideas behind it. Everyone had their own jobs, Olivia Huszti was in charge of electronics, Hayden Holloman was in charge of moving the “Oscars” from place to place, everyone had their own jobs.

How do you think the event went?

Very good actually, we had way higher attendance than expected and while there were some slip ups, there were no big mistakes that really threw the show off.

Message to supporters?

Haha, well I guess thanks for voting for me, you’ve made the right decision and we’ve got great things coming, still trying to get hats in the school.

Gavin showed me that there was a lot more than meets the eye to Senior Student Council. At first glance, many people will only really think of people like Gavin and Olivia Mouradian because you see them up front and speaking the most. It’s really easy to forget that there are so many people working hard to get things done for the school to make things more enjoyable for all of us.

The full list of seniors on Student Council is Natalie Black, Lauren Carrannanto, Gavin Heaney, Hayden Hollamon, Victoria Heiligenthal, Olivia Huszti, Max Kurtz, and  Olivia Mouradian,

They did a great job with Senior Oscar Night and if that translates to the future events of this year, it’s going to be a great one.