Freshman year of the high school years saw Lorenzo attending a school on the same campus that his mother attended years ago. A school she and her brothers and sisters graduated from and a place that Lorenzo would gladly call home. As a freshman, Lorenzo sought out a position on the Jefferson Student Council, to forge a presence on his campus. This position, as student council secretary, was won much to the surprise of Lorenzo. He had beaten out upperclassmen on a council that would serve both schools because of state student council rules.

Arredondo, in registering for classes, also had signed up for marching band. Though all of his friends from the middle school band went on to Andress High School, Lorenzo wanted to join the program at Jefferson High. As with student council, athletics and extracurricular activities would have to be shared by both schools rather than each school having separate programs.

Freshman year saw the building of a facility for the magnet school, something that had not been there for the students at the start of the fall 1993 semester. By their sophomore year, the future class of 1997 was ready to move into the new building. This building took the magnet students out of the empty Jefferson classrooms and only helped to spread a growing sentiment among a large group of Silva students that the Silva Magnet High School should be a completely separate entity from Jefferson High School, including in athletics and extracurricular activities. This would mean that magnet would not be able to have athletics or an official student council, being that Jefferson already had one. Most of this feeling to separate the schools came, for the most part, from Silva students who were not involved in athletics or extracurricular activities in the first place. At one point freshman year, as the year got off to a start, some Silva parents held a meeting off campus at the Texas Tech facility across the street next to Thomason Hospital to rally the support of other Silva parents to push to separate the two high schools. Their meeting and the subsequent passing of pro-separation flyers on the campus during their sophomore year were thwarted by a feeling that what was happening with the sharing of the two schools was something special.

Lorenzo Arredondo had remained a student council officer over a four year period and came to believe that the identity that the Silva school was looking for could come from being involved with Jefferson High School. “As Silva prepares its students for college, so does Jefferson High School. The distinction comes in the difficulty and variety of courses being offered. What colleges or university would find a Silva student attractive if their four years were spent only studying? The stronger candidate for admission into any school would be the Silva student who has been involved through activities on both ends. It would be difficult to recall any time in history where people have benefited from division as opposed to unity. This campus is no different.”