"That lets you know somebody is in the tomb." Hughes noted Scroll and Key's front gate was open. Hughes added to that list "a smattering of Rockefellers and Vanderbilts" as well as cartoonist Garry Trudeau. Benjamin Spock and descendants of Mayflower families.
Bartlett Giamatti, musician Cole Porter, Dr. Its alums include former Yale President A. "Its reputation is that it's more serious and literary than Bones was," Hughes said. Scroll and Key was established in 1841 by 13 students who were angry they had not been tapped for Skull and Bones. You can't help but notice this "Moorish-inspired Beaux-Arts building," as our NHPT brochure described it. Then Hughes led us to the corner of College and Wall streets, where sits Scroll and Key. When a member of that society dies, Hughes told us, the other members then in the tomb break the drinking glass of that person. The other two are Skull and Bones and Wolf's Head.įounded in 1863, Book and Snake's alumni include Kathleen Cleaver, a founder of the Black Panthers. The society's headquarters is surrounded by a black, spiked fence adorned with metal serpents.īook and Snake, Hughes noted, is one of "The Big Three" of the societies. Our first stop was at Book and Snake, a tall, white-columned edifice across from the gateway to Grove Street Cemetery. Hughes also informed us that the societies are not officially part of Yale. But in the '60s or '70s, when the societies began to be seen as 'elitist, snobby and exclusive,' people started keeping their names out of the papers," he said. "The names of the taps (new members) were published in the New York Times. He acknowledged membership rolls used to be even more public than they are now. "I tend to prefer 'senior.' They're not all that secretive, at least in terms of membership."
"There is a debate over whether to call them 'senior societies' or 'secret societies,'" Hughes noted. The underground societies have no permanent buildings, unlike the groups with the "tombs." The undergrounds tend to go in and out of existence, unlike the much more established societies that have that physical permanence. That doesn't literally mean it was underground, he explained. Hughes disclosed to us that while at Yale he joined an "underground" society.
He was appropriately dressed in a Yale hat, blue tie, blue sportcoat and brown khakis. We, too, had our share of rituals (which I cannot reveal here), but we lived in a basic house and our customs didn't come anywhere close to the pomp and circumstance surrounding Yale's societies.īrian Hughes, Yale class of 2000, led our tour group. Like many college alumni of a certain era, I joined a Greek fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, at my palace of higher learning, Lafayette College. That's the only society with windows, so it's not a "tomb." Not surprisingly, it wasn't the Skull and Bones membership that had said "Come on in!" It was representatives of Elihu, the historic house at 175 Elm St. In order to be included on the tour, I had to agree beforehand to a strict rule: absolutely no photos could be taken by our photographer inside the one building where the tour-goers were being allowed.
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