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A Night in the Shrine Room

What would you hear during an overnight stay in the Shrine Room of the Memorial Belltower?

Honking and hollering from Hillsborough Street, to be sure. Every half-hour, you’d catch the Westminster tone played on the chiming carillon.

But what else would you hear? The distant howl of wolves? The echoes of decades-old celebrations at the Belltower’s base?

We’ll likely never know. The Belltower only has vacancies twice a year, and the guests at these sleepovers aren’t talking.

Boxes of senior class rings sit at the base of a plaque in the Memorial Belltower Shrine Room.

They’re quiet because they’re jewelry, and their annual Belltower sleepovers form a cherished NC State tradition. For the last eight years, Vice Chancellor For Student Affairs Tom Stafford has given graduating seniors’ class rings a night in the Belltower.

This year, for the first time, the students themselves placed their rings in the Shrine Room. As an added bonus, their rings spent two nights in the Belltower.

“That means that your rings will be twice as powerful and will absorb twice as much Wolfpack spirit as those students who only had one night in the Belltower,” Stafford told a group of about 50 students and their loved ones during an April 27 ceremony to place the rings in the Shrine Room.

Savannah Revelle, a communication major from Apex, got a one-year jump on the ring tradition. A junior, she won’t graduate until spring 2013, but she couldn’t wait to participate.

“It just embodies the spirit of NC State,” Revelle said of the tradition. “I live across the street, so whenever we win a home game, I get to see the Belltower lit up … it’s just a symbol of everyone coming together for one goal, and it means so much to me.”