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When students get their ring at ring delivery, I think it’s really amazing that every student can say, “there’s a little bit of me in that ring.” What we do on the committee is that we try to represent every single community and every single background on the ring. and get our ring and take a bunch of really pretty pictures. We all wear really beautiful gowns and tuxes and go to a stunning place in Boston and celebrate being halfway through M.I.T. So, delivery really signifies the halfway point through our time here at the institute. And it’s just a really great event because it is one of the few times that as a class everyone is fully together getting to do something. One of those events is “premiere” which is essentially this giant theatrical event where the class is shown the ring for the first time and it takes place in the biggest performance space on campus. In addition to designing the class ring, we put a lot of time and effort into the events surrounding the class ring. So, how light do we need to go, what are the best compounds to be using, what are the best wheels and abrasives, so that we can really get that detail out in the finished product and have all of that available for the students. It is custom one-for-one manufacturing where a craftsperson is sitting down at a station actually hand using tools, wheels and motors to achieve that look. So, it’s a unique opportunity for us to take a look at our capabilities and stretch the limit on those capabilities. It’s tough to take something from the ideation stage like that that has so much detail and so much symbolism to something that’s manufacturable. There’s the bezel, there’s the skylines, there’s the two shanks, and there’s the Hacker’s map for the arbor on the inside of the ring. And every year, there’s six different parts of the ring that change. From the designing process, manufacturing, into the delivery of the actual ring.Īnd we’ve designed a lot of different rings for many different schools across the country, but this one is interesting, specifically, because there’s so many different parts that are customizable. student committee in redesigning every single aspect of the ring from top to bottom. Herff Jones has the privilege in working with the M.I.T. There are very few student run committee programs where the ring is redesigned year to year. They need to be marketing and event planners because we’re also responsible for premiering and delivering the ring to our class. In addition to being artists, they need to be business minded people to sell the rings. The committee is initially selected in the spring of their freshman year from the committee that precedes them, and their mission starts right away. It’s students of the class that decide what goes on the ring.
![herff jones mit brass rat herff jones mit brass rat](https://s3.amazonaws.com/uc-source/product/7625/MIT2020-GradRat-Left_Top-YG.png)
administration or it’s not a third-party vendor. is that students are the ones who are actually making the class ring and making a legacy for their class. That’s one of the unique things about M.I.T. The tradition of the brass rat actually began back in 1929 and there has been a committee of 12 students chosen every year to design the brass rat ever since. The brass rat is a class ring that MIT gives to its students at the end of their sophomore year, and they wear for the rest of their lives. unique, and probably the most iconic and amazing tradition that M.I.T. When you think about M.I.T., most people immediately jump into science and engineering but there’s a lot of things that make M.I.T. VIEW COLLEGE RING CATALOG SHOP YOUR COLLEGE RING Learn more about the ring committee and purchase your Brass Rat.
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This video was produced by Melanie Gonick with MIT News.