The National Honor Society (NHS) conducted their annual fall induction on October 23, 2024 before school in the school library.
Each year the National Honor Society puts on two inductions, one during the spring, the regular induction, and one during the fall, the late induction. Both require a 92% weighted GPA and 20 hours of community service. The fall induction is for students who weren’t able to join the honor society during the spring because they didn’t meet the GPA or service hour requirements but still filled out the candidacy packet on time and were approved by the council. This year the fall induction had 5 new inductees who performed their hours during the summer in order to join the NHS.
“The late induction is beneficial for students that raised their GPA during the spring semester so they still get the opportunity to join the National Honor Society,” says Ms. Silvestri, National Honor Society advisor and science teacher at New Hartford.
Ms. Silvestri brings up a good point, as students that worked hard during the spring to raise their GPA should still be given the opportunity to join the NHS. It doesn’t make sense to turn away a student of good merit who wants to participate in helping the community, simply due to the fact that they missed the first induction deadline.
“It’s not much of a change except it being official now. I was already doing most of the stuff involved with the National Honor Society, such as volunteering and attending meetings; I simply couldn’t get enough hours by the first induction and the time over the summer really helped me,” says Isaac Gruneich, senior at New Hartford and recent fall inductee.
Isaac is a firsthand example of a good student who simply ran out of time when it comes to the fall induction. He already had a stellar GPA, but ran out of time to get service hours leading up to the spring induction, meaning without a fall induction he wouldn’t even be in the NHS.
“Yeah I mean lots of kids don’t hear about honor society till junior year and don’t take getting hours seriously. It’s good to have extra time in the summer for the kids that want to participate but have no hours in the spring,” stated Richard Xu, National Honor Society president at New Hartford Senior High.
Many have the same plights as Isaac according to Richard in obtaining hours before the spring induction. This reinforces the idea of having a late induction for students that may have had things going on in their life or couldn’t get their hours for a good reason. In order to be approved for late induction you need to reach out to either Ms. Silvestri or one of the student officers to ensure you are eligible.
“An honor society member leads by example while upholding the code of conduct and strives to achieve both academically and in the community,” says Ms. Silvestri.
The current officers have been leading the way in what the National Honor Society is and strives to be. Currently they are doing a great job with both communicating to members and setting up volunteer opportunities in the community.
“It’s about interacting with local charities and small businesses where you can really see an impact instead of simply cooperating with some big anonymous organization. I have lots of fundraising plans for the future for us not only to break even, but to go far beyond that,” states Richard Xu.
This encapsulates another key element of the National Honor Society. The members can see the impact of their work with their own two eyes which allows them to take more pride in their work and possibly invest more effort as they see the difference they make. Honor society encourages students to continue helping their community even after graduating as a way of giving back.
