NHS

Yesterday during lunch, a friend brought out an idea he liked, for the second time. The idea was that NHS should raise their GPA requirements at my school. For a bit of context, the GPA requirement for NHS is set at 4.0, but our school is heavily inflated - pre-AP classes are worth 6.0 if you get a 100, and regular level classes are worth 5.0 if you get a 100. Thus one would have to be not getting all A's in REGULAR level classes, or equivalently worse than ALL B's in AP/pre-AP classes. His main argument was that it is too easy. Some of the other arguments made in the past were focused on prestige and its inverse relation to number of people who get it. Personally, I also agree as NHS presents itself as an HONOR society for academic excellence, but I think a 4.0 requirement is much to low of a bar for that. For further context, about one-third of the entire (graduating) class is in NHS from the virtual year. I certainly wouldn't consider that academic excellence. I also think that trying to manage such a large club makes it much harder on the sponsors, thus worsening the quality. I've also thought of some logistics for this:

1) Have one person who support this change running in every position. Then in the speech/video, make sure each person mentions that they are running with president's name and that together "we can make NHS more aligned with our principles of scholarship and diversify the service projects to reinvigorate our community's passion for service" or something like that (the second part being if you also want to push for different kinds of service projects. For example, I'd try to run if we had enough power so I could focus on environmental issues).
2) Campaign, i.e. posters, maybe go around during lunch and introduce yourself, idk
3) Assuming a successful campaign and every candidate of your "administration" gets elected, you can consider this to be a popular mandate and approach the sponsor about it.
4) Propose a plan to increase the GPA requirement (I think 5.0 is a solid choice as its not too drastic and is easy to remember). Make sure to mention that existing members can stay, and that exceptions for extenuating circumstances can be added on the Google Form to apply. Also mention the benefit to the sponsor - less essays to read, less work overall, more personal club (maybe they can read the essays more, assuming they don't considering the size of the club), etc. Also mention the victory of your "administration".

Some criticisms of this include it being ableist (although any GPA requirement is in some degree doing that), NHS being a volunteering club, and it being logistically problematic for no reward. The latter most is addressed with above and the value in keeping to NHS' principles. With regards to volunteering, I think that NHS isn't about volunteering at its core (there exists a volunteering club already with little requirements) and forced volunteering having sus benefits. Also, campaigning for more diverse volunteer opportunities helps alleviate this by allowing more projects people might be interested and passionate about to give back. With regards to ableism, I think that it would be already there because of GPA requirements, and in fact would be alleviated by adding a section to explain your situation. Another (imo valid) criticism is that as a society, there needs to be diversity of thought. Thus admitting a wide range of people helps facilitate this. I think the issue with this is that within the "social strata" there is still little interaction due to NHS. This just makes me really want some sort of "salon" club to have intellectual discussion on deep topics.

It felt pretty surreal to be discussing something like GPA requirements that could affect a lot of other people and something that is an extension of a deep philosophical opinion. The topic in question is on quality vs quantity, or more profoundly what is more valuable, having a lot of less talented people (democracy) or a few talented people (aristocracy). This further extends my thoughts on school society and the more serious general society (https://listed.to/@vt/33841/school-development-and-real-life).