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ANDOVER — Malin Adams ’09 understands the first “p” in politics: personal engagement. Follow that up with packaging, persuasion, passion, even principles…and you’re on the path to plurality. Adams captured the Phillips Academy student council presidency with just such a combination. He explained his political strategy this way: “I was a candidate with a good mix of sincerity and fun, I put strong ideas on my platform, talked to as many people as I could, put up funny posters and smiled a lot. Overall I introduced myself with the sole intention of letting kids get to know me.”
Clearly, they liked what they saw. Adams was elected by student vote over two other candidates, William Thompson-Butler ’09 and Lawrence Dai ’09. Thompson-Butler came in second and becomes vice president, and Dai, at third, will serve as executive secretary. Adams said that a large part of his campaign platform was about expanding student communication and creating dialogue among students, starting with the student council’s communication with the student body as a whole.
He is concerned, he said, that in a recent survey only 50 percent of the student body saw the council as effective, and he has various strategies in mind to increase the visibility and accessibility of student council members. He said a major goal is to “allow kids to feel more comfortable in discussing and sharing their ideas.” Adams also will charge the student council with making students’ lives “as pleasant as possible during some of the most trying times of high school.”
A conscientious student with a love of history and physics, Adams considers Concord, Mass., his hometown, having lived there most of his life. Adams first became involved in student leadership while attending the Fenn School in Concord, where he also served as president of the student council.
Entering Andover as a new lower, he has been a visible player in a number of student activities—a tour guide, a member of Student Activities and Pot Pourri boards, and an 11th-grade representative. As for long- term plans, Adams says his Andover experience has already helped him realize how he wants to live his life—“helping others in the communities I am part of, whether it emerges as a job in consulting, politics, or community service I am not sure.”
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