The Guidon is the handbook of The Citadel which is used to familiarize new cadets with the customs and traditions of the school. The following information is paraphrased from pages 110-112 of The Guidon.
Standardization brings two distinct advantages.
First, it makes The Citadel ring easy to recognize, since all graduating classes wear the same type of ring, and secondly, it denotes not a member of a certain class, but The Citadel graduate. The Citadel ring signifies a host of accomplishments, for not only does it symbolize a partial history of the State of South Carolina and The Citadel, but also it relates the ideals for which the college was founded. Almost every feature of the ring is symbolic of a goal or an attainment of past members of the South Carolina Corps of Cadets. The oval crest of the ring is dominated by a reproduction of the palmetto, the state tree of South Carolina. The two oval shields at the base of the palmetto tree are miniature replicas of the state shield.