Aliya Reames is a bright and compassionate Senior at Boise High School. She is a portrait photographer, runner for the BHS track and field team and member of BHS’s National Honor Society chapter. Combining her passion for photography and need for an individual service project, Aliya began her service project with an assignment from her English 101 class.

“It originally started in my English 101 class with Ms. Daley. We were supposed to interview one person we found to be interesting, and I thought about my grandma, she went to Boise High [class of 1965].”

Aliya’s first interview gave her the inspiration to continue interviewing various alumni from years past about their experiences, turning it into a ‘Humans Of New York’ type of story. “From this interview I thought that it would be cool to explore how the culture of Boise High has changed, or how it has stayed the same.”

Her favorite interview was her Grandma’s, but a close second was an interview with David Hamlin’s Dad. “His was really cool because he was a varsity cross country runner in high school. He told me about this tradition they had, they would run down one of the streets near [BHS] to a parking garage. One of the parking levels was split, so the tradition was that a runner would run down on the lower level and try to beat the group out without getting spit on by the group that was running above. They called it the ‘gauntlet’ and if the person running down below made it through without being spit on, it was a huge pride thing.”

Social media has been the most important in getting the word out about her project. “Social media has been a big help because I am friends on Facebook with a lot of adults, who are friends with a lot of adults, so my message can reach pretty far.” Aliya has managed to interview 10 BHS alumni, and is planning more.

Her efforts to learn more about the history of Boise High through it’s alumni has also started a new project with administration. Mr. Thompson is possibly starting an alumni association project with one of the alumnus Aliya interviewed, Tina Michael. “My partner Serrin Kim (another senior at BHS) is in charge of creating a website for the Alumni Association. Each post to the website will include a little clip of a story about a BHS Alumni and a photo that I took.”

One of the most important takeaways Aliya has discovered while conducting this project was that interviewing past BHS seniors has served as a reminder for her to take time and enjoy her senior year. “I think it’s really cool to see how things have changed over time and it will be great for people in the future to enjoy.”