The 'Brass Rat' Gets a New Look

The times they are a-changin' -- and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the class rings are changin' with 'em.

The Class of 2002 has added technology, femininity, and Star Wars to its class ring -- three firsts for the revered item.

Nine members of the sophomore class conferred for nine months, hashing out the details of their "Brass Rat" (M.I.T.'s name for its class rings). Among other changes, they broke with tradition and substituted an image of a man and a woman for one of two men -- to the chagrin of some die-hards at the university. Women now make up 41 percent of M.I.T.'s undergraduates, and 43 percent of the Class of 2002.

Rings of past classes have always included the two men -- one a bearded scholar and the other a blacksmith.

The rings -- historically made of brass -- also featured a beaver, a traditional symbol at M.I.T. of engineering and mechanical skills, hence the moniker "brass rat."

Although each class can change elements of its ring, alterations in the past have been less revolutionary than these. The Class of 2001, for example, turned the beaver to face right, a tweak students thought symbolized change.

But this year, the nine ring lords made more-radical changes. The blacksmith has traded in his hammer for a picket sign, commemorating a student protest over housing earlier this year, and the male scholar has been transformed into a woman holding a laptop computer. The duo is illuminated by a "lamp of knowledge" that resembles R2D2 -- a nod to a 1999 student prank that made M.I.T.'s Great Dome look like the Star Wars character.

"Each element took roughly three to five days of deliberation before we could actually say, 'Yes, this belongs on the ring,'" says Faisal Reza, who led the ring committee. Over 95 percent of sophomores, he says, have purchased the new rings, which range in price from $95 to $375.

But some students are less than thrilled. "The picket thing is ridiculous," an anonymous student told The Tech, M.I.T.'s student newspaper.

Sarah A. Farrar, a sophomore, has heard others criticizing the ring's newfound gender equity, though she thinks those qualms were only "jokingly chauvinistic."

She's excited to collect her finger ornament. "On the whole, I think it's pretty neat."