Abolishing the Pinning Ceremony

[drem7116]

Hi all,

I am currently a nursing student in a BSN RN program heading into my senior year (woo hoo almost done). I have also been elected Vice President of the Student Nurses Association at my school and today I got hit with a big blow in an officers meeting!! I was advised that the ceremony to honor the culmination of all my and my peers hard work is no longer going to be celebrated; as the school has decided to do away with the pinning ceremony.

Initially, i was at a loss from words. I remembered sitting in my very first nursing class and learning about what a prestigious honor it is to be pinned; to be recognized and welcomed into the the profession of nursing. When I questioned the faculty as to why this decision has been made, there only response was that "The pinning ceremony is more common place in associate programs..." (My school is a BSN program)...they followed with our school "is trying to become a larger school, in terms of the nursing program, and we found that the larger schools no longer have a pinning."

So my question is, is this true? Has it become more common place to not have a pinning ceremony? Is this a long held tradition that has fallen to the way side? If so is there some sort of recognition held in lieu of a pinning? and if so what? Personally, I DO NOT want to let this tradition go and I feel if this is the case it is a shame. Myself and the other officers are trying to gain feedback on this issue. We are also tasked with breaking this information to the rest of our class, whom i feel will be just as upset as I am. However before doing so, we want to have sufficient enough information and a petition prepared in the event the general consensus is to fight for our right to be pinned! Please let me know what you all think of this, or if you have heard that the recent trend is to do away with the pinning and what schools are doing so. My college is located in New York, very close to the city.

Thank you for all your input:)

[SHGR, MSN, RN, CNS]

OP, does your school mean they do not want to PAY for it?

If the school does not want to be involved, you could still have one.

It would be work and planning, but you could still do it.

[BluegrassRN]

I declined to attend my graduation and pinning ceremony for my LPN; for my RN it was a graduation requirement and I was ****** as hell I had to take time off to attend. I am not a sentimental person and I hate crap like this. Silliness and a waste of time. I did not attend my BSN graduation or their little departmental pinning (so that we could be charged another 100 bucks for a pin?). I personally think it's just dumb. My accomplishments are meaningful to me, I don't need recognition, flowers, a pat on the back and a stupid Nightengale pledge to validate them.

But who says the university has to approve or organize a pinning? Why do they get to decide? I like the idea of the junior students organizing it for the seniors. The school's student nursing chapter could organize it; they always seem to be gung-ho for projects. People who are interested in it can participate; those who aren't, don't have to.

You want a pinning ceremony; take matters into your own hands. You don't need school approval to have one.

[peggy2624]

How much of our identity do we want to loose/give away? Sadly, uniforms and caps are a thing of the past....sloppy and ill-fitting scrubs, dirty grass-stained sneakers....even our name tags have RN printed in miniscule lettering (unless we protest). A school pin at least identifies where you worked so hard to get your degree and licenseure.

Your patient should be able to identify you an a registered nurse but first you need to identify yourself as such and conduct yourself in such a way as you do yourself and your profession proud...Your patients and fellow staff shouldn't have to guess...

We don't have to go back to doilies on our heads and giving up our seats to MDs but for heaven's sake have some pride in your appearance folks....

[PineappleCrush]

Oh, wow! Pinning is still a very big thing for us! I just graduated from Arizona State University's BSN program (class of 60 students) last August and our pinning was part of the graduation ceremony. ASU has two ceremonies: Commencement with the whole university and the star-speaker (blah, blah, blah). Half the time a ton of people don't bother with that because it's for the entire university, so the ceremony is HUGE, only doctoral candidates walk across the stage, etc., so you're literally just sitting there for like three hours listening to speeches. Boring.

But Convocation is where the individual colleges do their own ceremonies and have class speakers, etc. In Convocation, we elect our class speaker, a couple of the deans do their own talking, they call the names of the students, we walk across the stage in our cap and gown, get pinned by a faculty member that we voted on, shake hands with the dean, and then get handed our diploma cover. So they just do it all in one go for us, which keeps the tradition alive, but not in it's own separate ceremony, which has always worked for us.

The "pinning" simply consists of us putting the pin that we got at the Lighting of the Lamp ceremony at the beginning of the program on a long ribbon that we hand to the faculty of choice and they put it on us like a necklace. Not exactly a pinning, but it saves time lol. It works really well for us to just have the pinning be part of the graduation ceremony.

[PineappleCrush]

in error, see comment below :)

[PineappleCrush]

our pinning ceremony is tomorrow - I'm a junior and we plan the senior's pinning - to us the pinning is bigger than graduation and I know many of the nursing grads are skipping graduation and just going to the pinning

our department is very gung-ho about pinning

That's really neat that the Juniors plan the Senior's pinning ceremony! That's kind of a cool tradition for your school. Reminds me of Juniors planning Senior Prom in high school

[dee78]

I had one when I graduated from LPN school, it was a beautiful ceremony. We had @40 graduates. We did have students who opposed having it in a church so it was held in the school gym. Those same students stood silent during the nursing prayer because they are atheists. My personal thought was that it is a religious like ceremony and they should have chosen not to attend (it was optional).That said, my RN pinning is on Friday!! We have 130 grads. It is mandatory but the ladies leading the prayers have been instructed to keep it nondenominational and not to say Jesus. Also, our pinning is the only graduation we get to share with all of our family because the college has limited us to 4 tickets.I think in the effort to be politically correct, nursing schools are doing away with the pinning. They may give other reasons but ultimately it comes down to the possibility of being sued.

[PacoUSA, BSN, RN]

My school decided to combine the pinning ceremony with convocation. My graduating class had mixed emotions about this: the basic BSN 2-year students are the most ticked off because they fundraised for a while to have a separate ceremony. I am part of the 1-year accelerated BSN students, and most of us did not really care either way. I personally was happy not to have to attend a separate function, especially when a separate pinning ceremony would be more heavily attended by the 2-year class, and at our school the 1-year and 2-year students traditionally get along like oil and water. I guess I never really appreciated the significance of a pinning, as I am the first nurse in my family ... And this being my second career, I am more focused on graduating and getting back to work! One year of my life without employment had been incredibly and insanely difficult. I will never eat ramen noodles and cheese sandwiches again!

[hell0kittygyrl]

I'm getting pinned next Friday (at a 2 year school) and we almost didn't have one due to budgets. Anyway, my feeling (and those of the classmates I've talked to) is that the pinning ceremony is an honor, and a BIG deal. Not to take away from other curriculi, but we feel the Nursing Division deserves something special that is just ours. I have a 4 year degree as do many of my classmates, and we all say the same thing: getting a Bachelor's in something else is NOTHING like getting through a nursing program. If for no other reason than to recognize the hard work and dedication it's taken to get you here, you totally deserve a pinning ceremony (and I told my mom it might be the only time she gets to see me walk down an aisle wearing white )

[BroomQueen]

Well personally I'm not sure about BSN and all that, I'm just a lowely LPN :thankya: BUT, my class only had 7 students in it and the other instructors didn't feel that we were enough to 'validate' an entire ceremony so they said we could wait and get pinned with the class following us, 3 months after we would have all graduated, taken our test and hopefully become LPN's. Well needless to say we did NOT wait lol. We decided that we would have our OWN ceremony with our own $ outside of school and just do it that way.. So just talk it over with your peers and see (I'm not sure if you said how far away you are from graduating) if everyone could pull some $ together, rent a space somewhere, make it a potluck instead of catered and just get some decorations. Have a guest speaker, maybe a favorite teacher or choose one amungst yourselves to do the introductions. You can usually order pins offline or even at a local scrub shop. It could still be a very nice ceremony, and hell, just to 'stick it to the man' (and out of professional courtesy of course ) Invite all of your instructions and 'higher ups' that had anything to do with your course studies. Good luck, I hope you have a good ceremony

[BroomQueen]

Being sued over what?

[neverbethesame]

I think that it is nice tradition that can still be carried out by the students themselves probably cheaper than it would've been had the school sponsored it. You can make it have any form or fashion that you all choose. Look at the positives of it.

I can see from the schools POV why they think it's outdated in a way and "not professional" only in that no other professions have a sorority/fraternity-type ceremony. At least as far as I know, and I graduated with a BS in another field in 1994. Also, do the men get a pin too? Maybe that is part of it too.