Preparations continue for the annual X-Ring ceremony at StFX.
It takes place at the Keating Centre at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
More than 900 graduating students will receive their class rings.
Shanna Hopkins, StFX’s director of alumni affairs, tells The Hawk the ceremony is steeped in tradition.
“One of the highlights of the ceremony is, upon exiting, when everybody gets to clink their X-Ring or tap their X-Ring on a kneeler that has been brought over from the chapel.”
Hopkins says the university’s chapel was home to the X-Ring ceremony before the Keating Centre was built.
She says the ring, said to be the third most recognized ring in the world after Super Bowl and Papal rings, brings people together.
“You’re on an airplane, and your stewardess has an X-Ring, or you move on and you see X-Rings all over the world,” she says. “You’re going to run into people all over the world, and the X-Ring is just the beginning of that conversation starter.”
Maggie MacDonnell, a native of Antigonish Co. and Class of ’02 grad, has been selected by the graduates to be the guest speaker for the ceremony.
MacDonnell won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize in 2017; she was chosen from more than 20,000 candidates from 179 countries for her teaching excellence and philosophy of hope and kindness.
