On Jan. 10, LOHS’s chapter of National Honor Society (NHS) added a new membership requirement: all NHS members are now expected to attend or volunteer for at least one NHS-sponsored event by the Apr. 10 deadline.

Kelly Nalty, who is NHS’s advisor at LOHS, stated that “the leadership team [put out] a survey for the membership and saw that the membership was wondering what the purpose of the organization was beyond just giving them some kind of star next to their name in the graduation program.”

According to the poll, “students who are part of this organization were wondering why we don’t do more group activities,” Nalty said.

NHS President Ganesh Palaniappan explained, “This year we want to make a change; we want each student to get more involved within the community and the organization. We’ve made a very light new requirement that says to do one NHS-sponsored event, which includes the ivy pull, volunteering at LOJ, visiting with future guest speakers if we do host them and attending induction ceremonies.”

Although the new requirement is a large step up from the previous event-attendance requirement — which was nothing — it is only a small step toward putting LOHS’s chapter of NHS in line with other organizations. According to Nalty, “other schools have a much higher volunteer service requirement. We require 15 hours, other schools require 30, up to 60 hours; we’re just trying to make the requirement for participation in our organization something more meaningful.”

NHS-sponsored event opportunities can be found on the group’s Instagram page, email list, and Google Classroom page.