A new club is armed with a mission to create role models of the upperclassmen students, while helping underclassmen find their place at school. Helping Rising Students (HRS) looks to make itself a club for fun activities and a place where upper and underclassmen can intermix and make new friends.

HRS is headed by seniors Jon Boyle and Josh Reany, and is supervised by Student Support Director Dr. Latoshia Ellis. The club’s first event will happen in the last week of November in room 205 and will meet together for major activities like tournaments and meetups twice a month.

HRS started as a small group of friends who regularly hung out with one another, whom simply referred to themselves as “HRS,” without the name having any connotation.

“I didn’t find a solid group of friends until sophomore year,” Reany said. “We’re trying to make a club where [a student], no matter who [they] are as a person, feels welcome.”

The previously de facto ‘members’ of HRS found that their time with one another helped each other through their high school careers in invaluable ways.

“Your friends define who you are as a person, and it helps you figure yourself out as a person,” Reany said. ”If you’re able to find that group, it helps [you] grow as a person.”

The intent of HRS is to act as a funnel, guiding new members towards groups of people of all classes with similar interests. This gives upperclassmen the opportunity to become mentors to underclassmen. The club plans to grow these mentorships simply by bringing upper and underclassmen together for fun activities, similar to the club leaders’ own experiences.

“Life isn’t all just grades. Whether you want to or not, you’ll stumble into a leadership position eventually,” Boyle said. “I feel that I’ve become a better leader because I’ve found things I enjoy here. You’re developing a skill set that helps you later on in life.”

HRS values qualities in students that help foster one another’s growth, and places emphasis on getting to know one another.

“If you’re not willing to be open and respectful to others, not willing to try and understand others, then HRS is not a place for you,” Reany said. “That’s something that’s always been important to me.”

Students looking to join should email either Jon Boyle or Josh Reany at [email protected] or [email protected] respectively, or get in contact with Latoshia Ellis at [email protected] in room 205.

“HRS has more of an interactive and fun activity sort of vibe,” Boyle said. “We hope to have students experience life instead of just learn about it, push them on to do more things, and find something that calls to them.”