Freshman year, I remember standing in front of the bus stop waiting for a bus to take me Kroger (of course the O.G. of Krogers and not the Gucci one on S. Main) and seeing this bus pull up in front of me with giant graphic saying “Wear the Tradition."
Freshman me thought why the heck is this plastered on a bus? Who buys a ring? There were no other Hokies in my family. I am the first (and hopefully not the last) Hokie, so I didn’t understand all the hype about the ring. Later that year, I joined an organization at Tech that taught me about the most upheld tradition at Virginia Tech, our class ring.
Virginia Tech's ring is unique to any other school's ring. Never have I heard another university hold a ring to closer to their hearts than us, Hokies.
This ring is much more than a ring we get as juniors. It is a tradition deeply rooted in our school’s history for more than 100 years. Our rings are exclusively designed to represent each class that will wear the tradition the rest of their lives.
It is so much more than something that you wear and one day put it back in its box up on a shelf. It's something that represents the everlasting Hokie spirit within us all.
It signifies a school that has so much spirit it breaks records on a Richter scale. It signifies a school that cannot be torn down. Whatever might happen to us, we are strong and we are united.
It signifies a bond with a person you may not even know, but when you both see that ring you love so much, you are instantly connected. And in that ring that contains gold melted down from Alumni rings, so that every ring keeps you consistently linked to the past and the future.
It's a ceremony held every year for cadets, who will have never laid an eye on it, until their dates untie their silk ribbon, and put their ring on while "Moonlight and VPI" is sung in the background.
It's a memento to the past, present, and future Hokies to whoever wears this tradition. Our ring is unlike no other, our ring is our history, our ring is Virginia Tech, and now the Class of 2019 wears the tradition.
