All rights reserved on entire contents nothing may be reprinted, or displayed on another web page, without the prior written consent of the publisher. Over pizza, a sandwich, and a cold beverage, the "rat" was removed from my pocket and placed on the table in front of an ecstatic Pete.Īt last, 27 years after being lost, the Brass Rat was back home where it belonged.Ĭopyright © 1995 - 2015 People's Publishing. So, on Saturday, June 27, 2009, a specific 1981 Brass Rat went to lunch at a local restaurant. The beaver on top of the gold ring is the MIT mascot, so chosen because it is considered to be the engineer of the animal world. It is said that the Brass Rat is one of the most recognizable rings in the country, ranking just behind those of West Point and the Superbowl. Nicknamed the Brass Rat, the MIT class ring is redesigned each year, so each class's rings are unique. You don't know me, but my name is Gary Speck, and I have something you might have lost a few years ago at the beach." On Monday evening after coming home from work, I called. So, I went to the website, where typing in his name gave me only one result, here in southern California.įrom firing up the computer to writing down a phone number took less than 15 minutes! I now know what he looks like, but where is he now? Thankfully, his name isn't John Smith! I went back to Google, typed in the name, and got a couple hits, but nothing I could use. As the university is primarily an engineering university, nature's engineer- the beaver- is a perfect mascot. ^ the hacker’s map on the underside of the ring.The bezel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology class ring features a beaver. I really like the Curiosity skycrane, MIT Police shield, and reference to last year’s massively epic snowball fight: ^ the class shank and seal shank, respectively. Overdesigned as it is, with sometimes trivial details crammed into every square millimeter, awkward attempts at symbolism (a Newton’s cradle hanging from The Alchemist’s armpits?), and a beaver apparently sporting a black eye – flaws and all, the Brass Rat is quintessentially MIT, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.Įxcept for those stupid mismatched gears. In the end, though, no one will remember these nitpicks. The website malfunctioned for several hours while people tried to figure out where to buy a ring.Īnd perhaps most ironically for a RingComm made of 5 mechanical engineering majors, they managed to put these seemingly nonfunctional gears on the shank (a metaphor for the grinding mismatched gears of bureaucracy?) The RingComm chair is at least the 3rd in a row from the same fraternity, selected behind closed doors. There were the usual charges of favoritism leveled at the Ring Committee – of the 11 members, 10 are affiliated to a fraternity or sorority, and only 2 are from the east side of campus. This year’s Premiere wasn’t without its share of flaws, not dissimilar to the Sochi Olympics, another event suffering ring-related malfunctions and accusations of corruption. From the direction you wear it on your hand, to the many references to punting/tooling/hacking, to the class-specific inside jokes, it’s cloaked in tradition. We don’t hold to tradition and propriety very much at MIT – the closest thing we have to an official school song is probably the Engineer’s Drinking Song – but the Brass Rat is one of the few exceptions. It’s the event where the Brass Rat for each class is revealed, and yesterday night the 2016 Brass Rat was revealed! Ring Premiere, however, is one of those events that brings out the inner prefrosh in all of us. In that same spirit, the beaver wears a brass rat, as a symbol of connection to the class of 2022 and the Institute which harbors it, and the 155 Smoot represents our class being the 155th graduating class.
MIT BRASS RAT HAND FULL
After a few semesters of psets, midterms, finals, and projects, that once youthful prefrosh full of joy and excitement can seem a long way away. In its hands, the beaver holds a diploma scroll that transforms into a key, as your time at MIT will open countless doors and opportunities. One of the hardest things to avoid at MIT is a sense of jadedness.
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