Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is a secret society of senior (fourth-year undergraduate) students at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Many have ascended after graduation to positions of prominence in business or government, contributing to some conspiracy theories. Each year, only 15 juniors are "tapped," or chosen, for lifetime membership in the club.
History
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- The secret societies are institutions unique to Yale and are found in no other academic institution either here or abroad. They are privately owned and are not the property of Yale University. There are six “above-ground” secret societies. Skull and Bones, founded in 1832, is the oldest and the most important. Scroll and Key was founded 10 years later, in 1842, and is second to “Bones” in prestige; in some years, the “better men” will choose Keys over Bones, as apparently happened in Harvey Cushing's class. The others, of considerably less importance, are Wolfshead, Book and Snake, Berzelius, and Elihu. [...] Each society consists of 15 members of the senior class, a total of 90 members for all six societies—well less than 10% of the class. In the spring, on “tap day,” each society elects 15 members from the junior class as their successors. The names of the new members are published in the Yale Daily News and used to be published in the New York Times. The annual yearbook carries the names of each member, along with a photograph of the “tomb,” and today one can obtain, over the Internet, the membership roster of Skull and Bones, dating all the way back to 1832. Who gets “tapped”? Typically, Skull and Bones will elect the football captain and perhaps another star player or two, the editor of the Yale Daily News, a Whiffenpoof, a champion swimmer or hockey player, one or two fraternity presidents, and campus leaders of every description. Traditionally, the 15th member tapped by “Bones” is the outstanding man in the class. Sadly, some aspirants to this title over the years have turned down other societies while awaiting the tap that never came. Skull and Bones has been considered the epitome of the Eastern establishment, the confluence of old money, power, and prestige. The society's membership roster includes some of America's most powerful families: the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Fords, Phelps, Pillsburys, Walkers, and Whitneys. Yale graduates who were members of Skull and Bones include all three Yale undergraduates who have been elected president of the United States—William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush—as well as David McCullough, William F. Buckley, John F. Kerry, John Hersey, Archibald McLeish, Henry Luce, Averill Harriman, Prescott Bush … and the list goes on and on. What power and influence does Skull and Bones wield? In actuality, Yale over the years has attracted talented and intellectually gifted students to the college, and Skull and Bones has done a good job in identifying these unique individuals and rewarded them with election to the society. Thus, with a single exception, every Yale president from the mid 1800s to 1950, some 100 years, was a member of Skull and Bones. Many important administrative positions, deanships, and faculty posts at Yale were held by Bonesmen, and the governing Yale Corporation was liberally sprinkled with members from Bones and Keys. At times, it could be said that Yale College was a wholly owned subsidiary of Skull and Bones! In her book, Alexandra Robbins has emphasized the power and influence of the “patriarchs,” the graduate members of the society, over the affairs of Skull and Bones. Thus, when the “knights,” the undergraduate members of Bones, first voted to admit women to the society in 1991, 20 years after women were first admitted to Yale, a number of older patriarchs, led by William F. Buckley Jr., changed the locks on the tomb and suspended operations for a year.[1]
Wokeism
Skull and Bones admitted its first black member in 1965, and the president of Yale's gay student organization in 1975. Notable members of the 1980s are: Michael Cerveris (Class of 1983), American actor, singer, and guitarist, Earl G. Graves Jr. (Class of 1984), president of Black Enterprise, Edward S. Lampert (Class of 1984), founder of ESL Investments; chairman of Sears Holdings Corporation, James Emanuel Boasberg (Class of 1985), judge, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Steven Mnuchin (Class of 1985), United States Treasury Secretary, and Paul Giamatti (Class of 1989), American actor and producer; son of A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Yale 1978-86.
The class of 1991 tapped seven female members for membership in the next year's class, causing conflict with the alumni association. The trust changed the locks on the Tomb and the Bonesmen instead met in the Manuscript Society building. In recent years, Skull and Bones, like other Yale institutions, "utterly transformed", according to The Atlantic. Notable members of the 1990s are Dana Milbank (Class of 1990), author and columnist at The Washington Post, Austan Goolsbee (Class of 1991), staff director to and chief economist of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, David Leonhardt (Class of 1994), journalist and columnist at The New York Times, Angela Warnick Buchdahl (Class of 1994), senior rabbi at New York's Central Synagogue and Tali Farhadian Weinstein (1997), attorney, professor, and former candidate for New York County District Attorney.
The society tapped its first entirely non-white class in 2020 (blacks, Asians and so on). Few descendants of alumni get in, and progressive activism is an asset. The class of 2021 admitted no conservatives. The elite alumni association has largely withdrawn, so has money, power and influence. The now liberal and politically correct society spends its time primarily partying and drinking. An elitist commitment of honor and sense of duty has became an ideology of depravity and "demarcation against the political right".
