Brass Rat Demystified

MIT's class ring is formally called the Standard Technology Ring, but it is better known as the Brass Rat. The tradition of our class ring first started in 1929, when the senior class president, C. Brigham Allen, assembled a committee tasked with designing the ring. The first debate centered around which symbol of the institute to honor on the main face of the ring - the Great Dome or a beaver. Eventually the beaver was chosen, at the same time as it was declared our official mascot, for 'his engineering, mechanical skills, and industry' along with 'his habits [that] are peculiarly our own, [as] he does his best work in the dark.' The ring originally had three main faces; the bezel, featuring the beaver, the class shank, depicting the Great Dome and the class year, and what later became the seal shank, proudly displaying 'MIT'.

For many years the ring remained largely unchanged, varying only due to the different companies producing it. However, in the 1990 Brass Rat, the skylines were added to either side of the bezel, Cambridge on one side and Boston on the other. This changed the construction of the ring, which now had 5 elements which started changing more and more every year. The class of 2009 committee then added a hackers map, a guide to MITs tunnels hidden on the inside of the ring and the final element present in today's ring.

In recent years, due to the improvements in jewelry manufacturing technology (with notable contributions from MIT alums), the rings have contained more details than ever, encapsulating the many different elements of the MIT experience into a single ring. Although the design of the ring changes year to year, the basic elements remain the same, tying the different classes together. Even more than that symbolic connection, the Brass Rat gives us a physical connection with past years, in the form of the Ring Melt. Each year we receive donated rings from previous alumni which are then melted down, and that gold is mixed with the gold used to create our own Brass Rats. Through this tradition, all the classes of MIT are connected, and our Brass Rats are proof of our ability to thrive at MIT and beyond.