The Revere National Honor Society (NHS) held their annual Induction Ceremony to officially welcome new members into the academic and altruistic organization.
The Induction Ceremony is held every year to welcome new members, and honor senior members of the group. NHS President and Revere High School (RHS) Senior Shane Yankovitz gave a brief synopsis of what the event is.
“The induction is basically our big yearly event where we celebrate the new members and also the returning members. All the new people get to walk across the stage, get their flower, and then we have a short little ‘everyone stand if you’re already in NHS’ and then we also recognize our senior members,” Yankovitz said.
RHS science teacher and group adviser, Paul Fisher, spoke about the purpose of the ceremony.
“This is our chance to honor the students who have been [accepted] into NHS this year. . . . This is a chance to induct them formally. We invite their parents and any other people who want to come and watch,” Fisher said.
While the ceremony is meant to honor new members, it is also meant to honor old ones. RHS principal Dr. Andy Peltz spoke on some of the traditions that honor all members of the NHS.
“One of the traditions is lighting the candle for each one of the pillars, the symbolism of knowledge being light and piercing into the darkness. The lighting of each candle is [symbolic] of [the idea that] NHS members are supposed to bring light into spaces and not create more darkness. It’s sort of the symbolism of the current NHS members inviting new members in,” Peltz said.
The pillars Peltz mentioned are characteristics of NHSas a whole and individual members. The pillars include scholarship, service, leadership and character and encourage members to follow the values presented. These traditions are crucial to passing down the legacy of the NHS to future generations of members.
To ensure the success of the NHS ceremony, there are a lot of components to setting up for the event. Yankovitz voiced some of these elements from the perspective of an NHS member.
“We wrote our speeches. . . . There’s a candle lighting ceremony where each officer has to light a different candle. So we’ve been assigning those and then we also had to contact the board to . . . invite them to come to the event,” Yankovitz said.
Peltz spoke about preparation for the ceremony from an administrator’s perspective.
“The ceremony is run by the NHS officers and Mr. Fisher. . . . The superintendent and myself get to be a small part of the induction ceremony. We each read a short speech talking about the characteristics of what type of students it would take to be a member of National Honor Society and what we hope that our students do with once [they’re] inducted [and if they’re] living up to the expectations set by the guidelines of NHS,” Peltz said.
NHS welcomed 40 new members on March 4 in the RHS auditorium.
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