A battle for the hearts, minds and fingers of the nation's high school students is being waged in the tiniest of theaters: the side panels of senior class rings.
School mascots and graduation year, the hallmarks of rings in the past, are being bumped aside or minimized to make room for "pride sides" -- minuscule designs that would be hard to link to in-class accomplishment, including zodiac and peace signs, skateboarders, ethnic flags, rock climbers and figure skaters.
And there are thousands more options, an explosion of choice that is part of the industry's efforts to revive interest in a tradition that may have peaked with poodle skirts.
Companies are turning to high-tech sales tools, lower-priced mystery metals and overall fashion trends to compete against the unending similarly priced choices teens have to reward themselves for completing high school. ("Do I want a mini-iPod or a ring that is dangerously close to something my parents wore?")
Although ring companies still employ campus representatives, they have begun pointing students toward the Internet, where "configurators" enable would-be buyers to design rings and view the results before committing. Product developers attend jewelry and accessory trade shows to plug into the latest fads, then incorporate them into designs that often end up looking more like promise rings than military-style salutes to specific schools. (The school ring tradition began at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1835.)
"I joke that our slogan should be, 'Bling-bling, buy a class ring,' " says Deb Gabor, director of retail marketing for ArtCarved, which sells school rings in jewelry stores.
When you throw in the hundreds of ring options -- from color, cut and adornment of the stone to type of metal and style of ring -- it can make flipping through a half-pound ring catalog about as much fun as cramming for the SAT. And although price remains an issue for some students, relevance may be a bigger one, educators and people in the industry say, as being true to one's school increasingly takes a back seat to being true to oneself.
"We are kind of losing touch with the idea of a ring bringing a class together as a unit. With the ring evolving into me-me-me product design, the school is less and less a part of the process," says Kean Chan, product manager for Balfour, based in Austin, Texas, one of the big three companies that sell rings on campuses.
