Class Rings are Good

by Nina Price, highlights, Opinion

               It’s the junior class ring ceremony. The whole auditorium is packed with junior students waiting to receive their rings, ordered at the beginning of the year. By the end of the ceremony, everyone is wearing the rings and showing them off to their friends and family. Many high school memories are locked and contained in a tiny silver, gold, or platinum band.

                Once out of high school, a glance at a class ring can bring back a thousand vague memories or a couple of vivid recollections.  Regardless of the importance and pertinence to everyday life, a class ring is an extremely powerful force whether a person recognizes it or not.

                Class rings are not only trendy in high schools, but are exceedingly popular in college as well.  They support class unity and spirit while creating a sense of pride and belonging in a school.

                “Prices for my ring were expensive, but it was college and it was worth buying. I am very proud of graduating from Princeton,” Daniel Blackmon, history teacher, said.

                A class ring signifies love and dedication to a school while unifying a class and continuing tradition.  Even though it is a highly recognized tradition, lately, many students find class rings pointless and unnecessary.  The extravagant prices for a ring are expensive for the current economic recession.

                “I find junior class rings a waste of money, in my opinion, just for the fact that I am not going to spend 300 plus dollars on a ring that I am never going to wear. If you want memories, buy your senior yearbook or all the year books from the other four years of high school you were in,” Issachar Vinajeras, senior, said.   

                Unfortunately, this is the mindset that many juniors and seniors have when they are given the option of buying a class ring.  What they do not recognize is that class rings are a great way to unite a whole class and keep a tradition alive while also promoting school spirit. 

Class Rings are Bad

by Lola Duffort, highlights, Opinion

Don’t buy a class ring.  It’s silly. More than that, it’s tacky.  It’s tacky and expensive and silly, and if the 27 different people I asked about this are anything to go by, you’ll most likely lose it anyway.  Which is odd, since it’s hard to steal a class ring considering people tend to have their names written, initialed and embossed into every conceivable surface of them. 

Getting a class ring isn’t a time honored tradition, most people wait until college to get one anyway.  It doesn’t at all represent the four years you spent in high school, because no matter how customized and personalized and initialized the ring is, it’s still just a ring.  You’re better off with pictures. 

Alas, if you’re intent on blowing 700 hundred dollars, allow me to make a few suggestions.  Invest in the stock market, start your own record label, buy a car, pay for 1700 cleft palette operations in India, have an early midlife crisis, purchase a lifetime supply of moist toilettes, become a regular at Sub Serious, buy a wallaby on e-bay, save Homecoming, buy 875 meat pastelitos, buy an arsenal of tasers, pitch in for half a floor seat to a Miami Heat game, or bribe the judges on American Idol.

Frankly, it won’t matter that much whether or not you get one.  They’re ridiculous and ridiculously expensive, but if you can afford one, go ahead.  If on top of fieldtrips,  SAT fees, club dues, books, gas, bagel and Jamaican patty expenses, tickets to prom and homecoming, and the other various expenses junior year brings, you still have large amounts of cash, then I can’t argue with your decision to buy one. 

Afterall, class rings do have upsides.  You’ll protect a large part of your finger from the sun and the other elements, thereby stripping yourself of finger-cancer worries.  If you ever get into a bar fight, you can sucker punch your drunken opponent with them.  If you’re interested in finger body building, you already have the perfect weights. 

But if those things aren’t for you, go ahead and save your 700 dollars.