Yale’s Not-Secret-Whatsoever Societies Now Even Less So
Okay, so by Monday we meant today. Regardless! An anonymous prankster lulled us out of our stupor yesterday with a delightful stunt: emailing the entire student body with the names of the (alleged) recent inductees of the secret societies Skull & Bones, Scroll & Key, and Wolf's Head. (Skulls above; full image after the jump.)
Yes, Rumpus prints this list each year -- but that's usually done at the end of the term, with the names of graduating seniors. While we've written before that outing secret societies usually just serves to validate the egos of those involved, this prank carries some undeniable juice: Tap Day was April 19, so these poor elites had just 10 days to savor the secrecy.
Also noteworthy: whoever was responsible appears to have hijacked the Yale College Council / Yale Student Activities Committee email system -- again. Are all college stunts/pranks going digital? You can't email a cow onto a rooftop, people.
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May 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am
So, yalies, any good stories about these kids?
May 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am
Know one of the Skull and Boners, and one of the Wolf’s Head guys. Both are solid kids. I really don’t think it’s right to pry into their social lives just because they joined some “secret” group.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:43 am
scroll & key is actually a fantastic group this year. really good people.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:47 am
i’ll add also that you don’t have to ‘hijack’ anything in order to spoof an email address. I could send a message from what looked like ivygateblog@ivygateblog.com to anyone.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Yeah, Scroll and Key is usually pretty legit. Don’t know much about this year’s group, but the outgoing class is very solid.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
skull & bones is coed?
May 1st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
yeah, s&k is legit, but it’s still pretty arbitrary. you could pick so many legit groups of 15 Yale juniors to tap for keys. bones, on the other hand — that’s a weird mix of cultural group leaders/athletes/random others.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:14 pm
FUCK THE HUNS
May 1st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
FUCK THE SAVAGES TOO
May 1st, 2007 at 1:41 pm
a black person, jew(s?), and a foreigner got tapped for skull and bones. hooray for times changing.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Scroll and Key, in general, is a mix of pseudo-intellectual douchebags, general losers, and then a couple of amazingly brilliant, down-to-earth people. Only two or three on their list this year are legit.
This year’s Bones tap class looks mad worthy. The group of seniors that are in it now are much better, but they still are legit, much more so than sk. Wolfs head has a cool class too
May 1st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
ohhhhh! shiiiiit! I can’t believe this came out. SB is legit this year
May 1st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
all of the big societies have been co-ed since the early 1990s, and have included black people, jews, asians, hispanics, and *gasp* homosexuals as a matter of course. diversity of experience is the only thing that makes them worth it.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Roslyn – this year’s list for SK does seem douchier than the current crop.
As to foreigners on SB, there is a Muslim/Pakistani tapline going back four or five years.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Yeah dude SB is legit this year—legit they are. Last year they were solid, but this year they’re legit-legit. All the other ones seem legit/solid to me but I don’t have legit knowledge vis-a-vis their legitness.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:47 pm
flamez0rs!
May 1st, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Nice play on “legit”, I was thinking the same thing, “wtf?!” Who the Hell uses “legit” like those posters above?!
May 1st, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I hear “legit” all the time, and use it myself. Is Yale really the only school where this is a thing?
May 1st, 2007 at 8:02 pm
i wish bones wouldnt tap based on looks so much. i mean, bones 08 is gorgeous but shouldn’t there be criteria other than just really good looks?
May 1st, 2007 at 9:09 pm
When did these societies go coed? Not to be sexist or anything, but it seems like you lose some of bonding that happens in single sex organizations.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:57 pm
…says the repressed homosexual frat brother.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
…says the psuedo-intellectual who just read a paragraph of Freud on Wikipedia.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:22 pm
whats the point anyway, all this stuff is nonsense
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
I wish we had sexy secret societies with sexy secret tombs. More than that, though, I wish people knew I was in a sexy secret society but I would deny it as a matter of course.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:14 am
wow, a pakistani tap? i love choosing people based on their race! we should do that more often!
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 am
d08, from what i hear of dartmouth societies they are simply social extensions of the frat scene. i can’t imagine that any special “bonding” occurs by virtue of the fact that they are single-sex. it seems to me that having only men in the group would compromise the purpose of overcoming the boundaries of personal experience to find common bonds (and stronger bonds from the focus it takes to establish inter-cultural, inter-gender, relationships). also, if any group on campus is going to enjoy arbitrary prestige, yale women simply deserve to be included in it as much as yale men.
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:17 am
yah, C&G is soo fratty!1
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:34 am
washindu “humpty” is the most legit person on this board…he should get one of the open SB slots
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:13 am
it must suck to go to a school where people treat the members of “secret societies” like celebrities. i used to think that sort of thing was intriguing but its really just nonsensical
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:24 am
B10: I wouldn’t say that’s the case at all. for one thing, the thing that makes this prank at all intriguing is that the names are usually run in the rumpus at the *END* of the year, i.e. are not known till then, i.e. cannot be celebrities because celebrities must be well-known. (: in fact the societies, except as an outlet for gossip, play a very, very trivial role on the campus social scene. (bear in mind that they don’t host parties in their tombs) I think if you want to point to the pernicious social effects of selective groups on the social life of campus, look at eating clubs and finals clubs, neither of which we have, of course. Those are major campus institutions at their respective schools that lend the entire social scenes of their respective schools an irritatingly selective, fratty hue.
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am
There is no Pakistani tap in Skull and Bones. The current Muslim tap is from the glorious nation of Afghanistan.
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 am
There is no Pakistani tap in Skull and Bones. The 2007 Muslim tap is from the glorious nation of Afghanistan. Selection for the Muslim tap is done through an intricate process that involves a huge map of the middle east and darts.
Next year will be an Iranian. NOT.
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:38 am
IN CASE YOU MIGHT HAVE GLOSSED OVER IT… THERE IS NO PAKISTANI LINE.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:50 am
some societies do hold parties in their tombs and invite non-members. Also, some societies are single sex.
i agree that societies play a trivial role in campus life … until you’re a senior. all of a sudden many of your friends are dispersed to random groups every thursday and sunday nights. this has an enormous impact on your social life! i imagine that the effect is positive for most of the people who are in societies. (i’m not.) but keeping secrets from one another doesn’t exactly enhance friendships.
please, don’t bother defending societies as non-elitist – the original purpose of a society is to exclude everyone who’s not a member. and, to believe that your group of ~15 is better than other groups of ~15. what could be more elitist/exclusive than that?
honestly, I would have joined a society if I had had the opportunity. but the majority of seniors are not in secret societies. for us, they’re at best annoying and at worst divisive. as you might imagine, they also bring out the worst in certain kinds of people. in my view societies are one of the worst parts of life at Yale.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:54 am
there is no muslim line. there is in fact a pakistani line. the nation of afghanistan is just an extension of the glorious nation of pakistan.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
yale07….half of the dartmouth societies are co-ed
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
y07:
i mean, thursday and sunday nights are not the worst nights on which you might lose some of your friends. Although I do agree that the frequency of it is a problem, and that I would turn down a society that took me away from my other committments (about which I care a great deal) every week.
That said–and I say this knowing a great many seniors in societies–I still think they’re really not a major problem. They just don’t affect one’s life enough. I think pehaps the lamest thing is the gross, disgusting travesty that is tap night. it’s just a disgrace. it’s not the robes or the masks–i’ve actually spent a bit of time walking around campus blindfolded/robed/masked myself in various contexts, and it’s rather fun–it’s the humiliating public exhibitionism/antics/getting a bus and driving to mohegan sun (ick…) that makes campus a very unpleasant place for a night. blindfolded, masked folks just attract stares and giggles. jock-strapped, trashed men handing out flyers for penis rings, on the other hand, are genuinely unpleasant.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:02 am
Losing Thursday nights is tough, but is Sunday night really a party night for you guys? I always took Sunday to be the one night where most don’t party, I mean Desperate Housewives is on for goodness sake!
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:11 am
No, that’s the point. Societies actually aren’t about having parties 2 nights a week. So when the previous commenter said Thurs and Sun are “not the worst nights,” he/she meant that neither was a huge party night so sacrificing it to hang out with your society instead of going out with friends was no big deal.
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm
thursday is indeed a huge party night for some of us, but that’s neither here nor there. it’s less about the specific nights than it is about the time commitment. 2 nights a week, every week of the year does make a difference. obviously you can still find time to hang out, it just takes more effort.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
myrtllllllllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!
May 4th, 2007 at 1:13 am
deeeeeeeeeeeeeer iiiiiiiiiiislaaaaaaaaaand!!!!!!!!!!!
May 8th, 2007 at 10:28 am
there is a columbia society — it’s actually more secret than yales’. their tomb’s at 118th & amsterdam.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:01 am
No there isn’t, columbia 07. The Columbia “societies” have neither tombs nor prestige.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Columbia 08, do your research… we have both secret societies and they, in turn, have storied, fixed meeting places. Dead white men may or may not be interred there. I’m sure they’re all the better for it.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:43 am
So how do i get to be in the s&b society?
June 5th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Easy, just start to believe that the world is better off being run by the elite, rich few at the top of the pyramid, ruling over the pooor plebian masses at the bottom of the pyramid. A healthy dose of new world order along with the ability to dehumanize others less fortunate than yourself are a must. Also, it pays to owe and be owed favors by people who can blackmail you with your most personal secrets. Might also be conveninent to worship the antichrist, etc…
November 24th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
What’s with all the minorities?
I highly doubt our future presidents are on this list.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Affirmative action will bring down even the most esteemed groups. The liberal establishment is like a cancer.