National Honor Society (NHS) is a nationwide student organization that focuses on leadership, community service and extracurricular activities.

According to nhs.us, NHS originated in 1921 and was the first ever nationwide honor society. Prior to that time there were only local and regional honor societies.

According to the NHS constitution, four main purposes have guided groups of NHS from the beginning, “To create enthusiasm for scholarship, to stimulate a desire to render service, to promote leadership, and to develop character in the students of secondary schools.” (nhs.us)

Throughout the school year students from Ritenour High School’s NHS plan and are in charge of different activities. The most recent was the Red Cross Blood Drive on Nov. 8, 2013, and it was led by English teacher and NHS sponsor Megan Jurs.

“NHS is really dependent on student leaders. We are in charge of getting everything together,” senior NHS Historian Raina Norman said. “For the blood drive we were running it. Mrs. Jurs was there, yes, but it is the students running it.”

NHS sponsors different projects throughout the school year, including a coat drive, for which they are selling popcorn to raise money. They also sponsor a tutoring session for little kids. According to Norman, NHS gets items donated to them so that they can give it back.

“I like the fact that we can go out and help people with the blood drive,” senior NHS Vice President Dylanna Jones said. “We get people to come in and give out too. It is not just us giving out. [I like it because] you never know what someone is going through.”

NHS works within the community on different service projects.

“We do different service projects because we can give back to the community,” senior NHS President Elisee Biayi said.

Since NHS is a nationwide organization, all schools must follow a certain procedure to accept applicants.

“Students are selected to apply. They must have a cumulative GPA of 3.25 or higher and have participated in extracurricular activates, have leadership experience, and have served in the community. Students apply and their applications are given point totals. A committee of teachers at RHS also helps to select members,” Jurs said.

The way that students get accepted into NHS has been the same since it came to Ritenour, but senior Caitynn Wait believes that there are things that could be changed to make the selection process better.

“[We could] improve the NHS process by having an interview process, that is a really important thing that a lot of high schoolers struggle with,” Wait said. “An interview process would help a lot.”

Once selected for NHS students can use the skills obtained to help with college.
“In college you will not have a teacher doing it for you, the students do everything,” Norman said.

To get admitted into NHS students need to do various things to get prepared for college.

“[NHS gets ready for college because] we write a lot of essays and fill out a lot of forms just to get in,” Wait said.

According to Jurs, those involved in NHS show strength in areas of scholarships, leadership, service, and character. All different things that colleges look at.

Those students involved with NHS feel that it is a family and that their work can help improve the school.

“I like the people I am around because obviously all of us want to be doing well in school and we like what is going on in school. We want to see more happen, like service projects, improving education and all that,” Norman said. “The environment in NHS is really cool.”