At the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, the National Honor Society (NHS) implemented a new rule that limits students from earning more than five of their NHS volunteer hours from donations.

In NHS, there is a requirement to obtain at least 20 service hours per year, and some students make donations to obtain a portion of their hours. According to senior and NHS president Fure Abhulimen, there was a growing concern among members of NHS, Key Club and the Student Council about students using donations to get their volunteer hours, leading to establishment of the new rule. The NHS executive officers, along with NHS adviser Rachel Reavy, implemented this policy after officially verbalizing it in their November meeting.

“Within our service projects, we want to make sure that we’re actually committing our time and our efforts into physical, actual service,” Abhulimen said. “Although donations are greatly appreciated and we really love to support different clubs around the school, we do recognize that it could become an avenue for people to miss out on the genuine intimate role of service when it comes to one-on-one service roles and participating in our community projects.”

Senior and NHS board member Jake Tsang feels that this regulation is beneficial and could motivate people to actually do more physical volunteering and work.

“You don’t want to get all your hours just from buying, you want to get it from doing hands-on work. I think that’s what this policy is pushing, and I think that’s a great thing,” Tsang said.

Abhulimen feels that the new policy is meant to create equal opportunities for volunteer service while staying true to NHS values.

“We just wanted to make sure that every student had an opportunity to serve, but also within the financial and economic realm, we weren’t putting anyone at a disadvantage.” Abhulimen said. “And at the end of the day, we just want to benefit the community in every way we can.”

Charlotte Liao can be reached at [email protected].