National Honors Society, an organization for students with high academic standards who follow the four pillars of service, character, scholarship, and citizenship, is to do a second induction due to a mistake where 112 possible applicants weren’t invited to apply due to an error in the computer system.

The system in Infinite Campus, known as Adhoc, was supposed to “pull” both sophomores and juniors that have a cumulative or term GPA of 3.6 or higher, according to Amber Brunk, Arvada West High School’s Registrar / Counseling Secretary. “ When we tried to pull both things, it only gave us the students who met both the cumulative GPA and term GPA of 3.6 or higher,” she adds.

After holding their initial induction on February 15, 2024, one of the three NHS sponsors, social studies teacher Joanna Komitor, received multiple emails from eligible students and curious parents who asked why they or their child did not receive an invitation to apply. Komitor comments that “that’s a pattern like that’s not… an oops, that’s ‘oh oh.’”

“ I’ve really felt badly about that. So I’ve been sending a lot of apology emails… That was a learning moment for a lot of us,” she says.

Now that a second round of applicants have been invited to apply, these students will under go the same process as the first round of applicants, of filling out an interest form that asks for teacher recommendations, extracurricular involvement, community service, and free response and essay questions. Five random teachers at A-West will then evaluate the candidates off of a rubric.

“The ones that had been invited the first time and chose not to [apply] or didn’t get in, they don’t get a second chance [to apply], because that also doesn’t feel fair,” Komitor shares.

Within NHS, current members are assigned to committees to help with the services and events the club provides to the community, such as tutoring or their annual Eggstravaganza event. One of these committees, known as the Induction committee, was in charge of planning and running the event. President Ryane Montoya, the NHS officer of the Induction committee, says that “ the induction committee is one of those committees that has a lot of work in a short amount of time, but we have 12 members so they can definitely divide the work. They were just as surprised as I was, but they are all ready to organize and execute round two!”

To ensure another mishap like this won’t happen again, two separate reports will need to be pulled and crosschecked to ensure all eligible students are invited to apply.

The second round of inductees will be sworn in at an upcoming chapter meeting.