Ring Night is primarily a junior tradition, but every class has an opportunity to be involved. Ring Night earned its name because, traditionally, it’s the time that juniors “earn their class rings.” However, it’s now purely a tradition of craziness and sisterhood! Most juniors don’t actually buy their rings during Ring Night, and you don’t have to participate in Ring Night to be allowed to get a ring. (I think everyone should participate, though, just because it’s a blast!) Also, Ring Night isn’t just one night; it starts on a Thursday evening and the fun doesn’t finish until Saturday night.
As I said, Ring Night is about craziness. The juniors are broken down into groups of 4-9 young ladies that stick together throughout the Ring Night and do activities together. Each evening of Ring Night, they perform skits in the dining hall, they also dress up and sing silly songs during the day, and sometimes they go on scavenger hunts in Roanoke. (It may sound really embarrassing, but none of it is done alone. It’s actually really fun to get dressed up and act silly when your close friends are right there with you, and if anyone feels too embarrassed, they can stop at any point.)
Seniors get involved by adopting Junior Sisters to take care of during Ring Night. But the juniors are not allowed to know who their Senior Sisters are until after Ring Night. So sophomores and first-years get the important job of being helpers and running messages back and forth between the juniors and their Secret Senior Sisters.
This year, I had three full Junior Sisters and two honorary Junior Sisters. (Honorary means that the junior already had two full sisters to take care of her, and I just contributed little bits during the activities.) The Senior Sisters are responsible for deciding what skit themes each junior group will perform, and for suggesting what costumes, songs, etc, the juniors use during the day.
As Senior Sisters, we all work really hard to make sure that our Junior Sisters will enjoy themselves and that the Ring Night assignments mean something to them. For example, our group (both seniors and juniors) are pretty dorky (and proud of it), so we seniors gave our Junior Sisters the skit assignments of “Superheroes” (for their Thursday night skit) and “Harry Potter” (for Friday night). From there, their creativity ran wild and we ended up with live-action versions of “Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny” and “The Mysterious Ticking Noise.”
Saturday night is the BIG night of Ring Night. For that night’s skit, Senior Sisters not only decide the theme for the skit, we also decide exactly which characters each Junior Sister would play. Our group chose Disney’s The Lion King. To tell our sisters what characters they were to play, we made individualized posters for each of them. (In the photos, the Junior Sisters are blindfolded so they wouldn’t find out who their Senior Sisters were… shhh, remember it was still a secret at that point!) My sisters played Scar, Nala, and the Hyenas (yes, all three hyenas at once).
Throughout the weekend my Junior Sisters also dressed up as various movie and television show characters…
…like Sam Carter and Ronon Dex from Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis…
…and Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog!
One of the great things about Ring Night is that Junior Sisters can be assured that their Senior Sisters are their friends and only want them to have fun. Each assignment is carefully picked for the junior it’s given to. And at the end of the weekend, the juniors get rewarded with their Ring Night baskets, full of special gifts and crafts chosen/made by their Senior Sisters. (The Junior Sisters receive their baskets after Saturday night’s skit, which is also when the identities of the Secret Senior Sisters are revealed.)
My three full sisters’ baskets…
(Actually, that last one was a toy dump truck, not a basket, lol)
Some of the most important items in the Ring Night baskets (aside from the large amount of candy and soda) are the BOTTLES. Each Ring Night basket contains four large bottles. Depending on the age of the Junior Sister, these bottles are either champagne or sparkling cider. BUT, these are not to be drunk just for fun!! Each bottle is designated for a specific senior year tradition: First Step, Ring Night, 100th Night, and Graduation. These bottles are decorated and personalized for the junior. At those four events during senior year, the juniors (who will be seniors by then) are allowed to open and drink one of their decorated bottles. Until then, they make great dorm room decorations!! 
Hollinsblogger Katy wrote about her Ring Night experience as a junior in a different group. Flip over to her blog if you want to read that: Katy’s Blog
