Class of 2019 Celebrates Senior Ring Weekend: A Look Inside the Making of SRW

by The Cowl Editor on November 15, 2018


Campus


 

photo courtesy of facebook.com/PCFRIARS2019

by Thomas Edwards ’20

News Co-Editor

Senior Ring Weekend, like many large events on campus, is not organized and planned overnight. 

The process behind SRW is a two-year journey that 11 students embark on, preparing everything from the weekend events to the design of the rings. 

To help this process run smoothly, these 11 students are divided into the different committees that make up the SRW Core. There are the Co-Chairs, responsible for orchestrating all other committees and the events, Ring Design and Premiere, Special Events Night, Formal Night, the SRW Mass, and Marketing. Each committee is responsible for their respective events.

The members of the SRW core are Devon Guanci ’19 and Caroline Cook ’19 as the Co-Chairs; Madeline Daly ’19 and John Stablein ’19 on the Formal Night Committee; Julia Roselli ’19 and  Catherine Keable ’19 on the Special Events Night Committee; Teddy Kiritsy ’19 and Emily Borrello ’19 on the Ring Design and Premiere Committee; Jacqueline Michels ’19 and Allison Schmidt ’19 on the Mass Committee; and Michael Fahy ’19 on the Marketing Committee.

While each member had their own committee and event to worry about, they met every Friday morning to update each other, brainstorm, and ultimately make unanimous decisions. 

“The decisions were brainstormed and decided as a group, but we were divided by events for a reason,” said Julia Roselli ’19, one of the two members of the Special Events Night Committee. “Myself and co-chair Catherine Keable were the ones who ultimately made any decisions for Friday and were the ones in contact with the DJ, caterer, designer, and all other outside parties.”

One of the greatest obstacles that came into play for the SRW Core was the size of their budget, a common problem for events. 

“When deciding where formal night was going to be, we had to also accommodate Friday night in Peterson.  Having formal night at a venue like Gillette, we would not have been able to decorate and have the DJ in Peterson that we did,” said  Roselli.

While price and budgeting were problems for the Core, an easy solution was compromising with each other to make sure no event suffered and everyone got what they needed.

Other than the three events of the weekend –Special Events Night which occurred Friday, November 9, Formal Night which took place on Saturday, November 10, and Mass which happened Sunday, November 11 – the main part of SRW is the Providence College Class of 2019 rings themselves. 

Much like the events of the weekend, a lot goes into the design, purchase, and distribution of the class rings. Teddy Kiritsy ’19 and Emily Borrello ’19 were the members of the Ring Design and Premiere Committee, and their jobs were solely focused on these aspects.

“We worked hand in hand with a local artist to design every detail of our class ring, down to the number of bushes in the rotary in fact!” said Kiritsy in regards to the design aspect of the rings. Each ring has a secret symbol of some kind that connects the ring to the class, one of which being 19 bushes to represent the class of 2019. 

“We worked closely with Balfour designing our collection of rings and which ones we were going to sell to our class. In total I believe we sold nine different types of rings; where some classes have only given out a handful of rings to purchase, like four or five.”

After months of looking through designs, the Ring Design and Premiere committee planned a large event to release the ring design to their class. “We ordered dozens of cupcakes, cake, apple cider flutes, raffles, and it was a smashing success!” said Kiritsy. 

The final responsibility of the committee was to write the class ring story to tie the class to the ring further. “It shows the importance of SRW and class rings to the senior class,” said Kiritsy.