It’s Secret Society tapping time at Cornell! And while the only thing I’d personally like to tap is a keg, some vaguely important people are gathering in their towers and other assorted secret places to decide who will be the next batch of elitists to prance around campus wearing pins on their collars.

Now before the commenters rip me to shreds, I’m gonna let you in on my own not-so-secret. I ran the Cornell Concert Commission in 2009––a position that is normally welcomed into these organizations and allowed to view Slope Day from a higher vantage point. However, someone or other didn’t like me and so I was shut out of the club.

In fact, I was rejected by the lesser secret society too. Yet despite being given the negative nod by them, the Sphinx Head Society needs my help. Into my mailbox yesterday afternoon I received the message below from the 119th Tapping Chair (but shh – it’s a secret!).

from            Shayna Gerson <[REDACTED]@cornell.edu>
to
date            Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:32 PM
subject            ************* nomination
signed-by            gmail.com

hide details 1:32 PM (11 hours ago)

Hello,

You are being contacted because *********** has been nominated for membership in the Sphinx Head Senior Honor Society and you have been identified as a reference for him/her. Though *********** has already been identified as a candidate, we are still in need of a letter of recommendation to complete his/her nomination. If you are interested in writing a letter of recommendation for him/her, we would greatly appreciate it. The letter does not have to be long, we are just looking for a glimpse into the nominee’s leadership and character from someone who knows him/her well.

We will be reviewing all nominations starting Monday, so we will accept letters until Sunday at 9pm.

Thank you for your help,
Shayna Gerson
Sphinx Head Tapping Chair, 119th Tapping Class

Read the rest of this entry »

The AP reported this afternoon that an anoymous “European art collector” is putting one of Skull and Bones’ many creepy and useless items up for auction at Christie’s.

The skull is fitted with a hinged flap and is believed to have been used during voting at the famous society’s meetings. The auction house said it also may have been displayed at the society’s tomblike headquarters on Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., during the late 1800s.

Well, shoot. First, some rando broke into their tomb, camera in hand, and uploaded the video to YouTube, replete with cheesy, menacing music (collective cable news orgasm.) Next, Bonesman and flag burner Hyder Akbar showed his dbag stripes (again) in a Wikipedia war. Now this?

Well. How about this. Does anyone out there need a method of settling a dispute democratically and macabrely? The Bonesmen have you covered: an antique ballot box, made out of a human skull! Try finding that in SkyMall or on HSN. So, at where shall we start the bidding? Back to that report:

Christie’s estimates the skull will sell for $10,000 to $20,000 when it is auctioned on Jan. 22.

$20,000??? Unless it’s Geronimo’s skull (naughty naughty)–or one of those magical ones from Indiana Jones 4 (so underrated)–that seems a little steep for a musty old clubhouse item.

Reaction, merchandising perks, and detailed photo after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, everyone’s been going on about how they wish they could hate Nick McDonell, Harvard ’07, whose third novel, An Expensive Education, came out earlier this month. They want to hate him, interestingly enough, for the exact reasons they want to hate the Ivy League: rich, connected, intelligent, internationally famous, good-looking, well endow—um, you get the picture.

Just like wait-listed Harvard hopefuls who secretly despise their already accepted classmates, many of McDonell’s latest interviewers haven’t quite been able to mask their sheer loathing for the lot they’ve been cast. Oh no, of course they’re not bitter. Not when the New York Times journalist deems McDonell’s background “insufferable” and calls him out on having (wait for it!) used family connections for summer internships.  I know! Surely you too are shocked.
Read the rest of this entry »

Fantastic Four star and teenage boy fantasy Jessica Alba recently made a visit to suddenly very hip Wolf’s Head Society. According to a tipster, husband and “budding producer” Cash Warren ‘01 brought her along for some elite treats out of plastic cups, weird games with sleepy-time masks, and photo ops. We can thank the latter for a peek inside the Hall (and Alba’s see-through dress).

While you can find pictures of Jessica Alba in any Maxim magazine, the shots inside of the Hall rank a bit higher than bathroom reading. But just a bit. There’s a framed picture of a letter to Yale President Richard Levin—that looks exactly as you’d expect a framed picture of a letter to look. Props to the photog for nailing that William Eggleston look in the boardroom shot. And the basement, well, it has that Yale feel to it: dark, Gothic, always morally bankrupt.

***Note: Stuffed wolf body but stuffed cougar (yes, it’s a cougar) head? What gives?

Here’s the part where everyone’s an investigatory journalist. What was the stripper wearing in the eye-mask scene??? From the expression on LBD girl in the background (center-left) who looks like a Looney Tunes die-hard, it’s probably an Elmer Fudd kind of thing—floppy hat, bell end gun, and accompanying insinuations—and she’s just recognized the speech impediment. Dude next to her recognized it, too.

After the jump, photos inside the Wolf’s Head Society and some surprisingly trustworthy captions about what’s actually happening in them.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Yale Pundits, culprits of the Scroll and Key application prank earlier this year, have released the list of taps for the top secret societies late last night. The newsletter-style email for the “Yale Does It Nude” addressed to and credited to former YDN editor-in-chief Andrew Mangino cracked what will hopefully be the last swine flu joke. Ever.

By the looks of it, Key is holding onto their YDN legacy by tapping current managing editor Bharat Ayyar.  Meanwhile, Skull and Bones kept it presidential, welcoming Yale College Council president Rich Tao along with current publisher of the Yale Record, Nozlee Samadzadeh-Hadidi.

The Pundits’ announcement is hot on the heels of Rumpus’s publication of the graduating class of 2009 society members list. Regarding our mistake in framing that coverage, we hope you commenters will cheer up now that we’ve covered everything. After all, this shit’s supposed to be secret, right?

After the jump, the original email from the Pundits and a video of a slow loris getting tickled.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yale’s Rumpus magazine recently published the full list of secret society inductees for 2009. These future-leaders-of-the-world hopefuls join a league of will-never-really-be-leaders-of-the-world Yale alums plus George W. Bush. Meanwhile, nobody outside of New Haven gives a shit after that Joshua Jackson movie showed how whack secret societies are anyways.

The lists may or may not be correct, but Google doesn’t care. The only name we actually recognized immediately was Andrew Mangino, former Yale Daily News editor-in-chief who is now a Scroll and Key member, again. (Wonder if he applied…and too bad he’s not a Boner…) Since he was on last year’s list, this  seems confusing. Smells like journalistic integrity, nevertheless.

After the jump, the absurdly long list of tap-ees and the trailer to aforementioned Joshua Jackson movie. The list is really effing long. Do the Elis really need 32 secret societies? Do we have a little complex, Yale?

Correction: Kind commenters have let me know that Rumpus publishes the list of graduating members, so obvious that Mangino is on both. We still don’t care.

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: The prank was actually pulled by the Pundits. More below.

Over the next few hours before Yale’s tap night, a few sorry Scroll and Key hopefuls will be finishing up their applications to join the secret society.  We’re sorry all you wannabe Keysmen. It’s a hoax. And if our well-informed hunch proves to be correct, it’s yet another Rumpus hoax.

Several anonymous tips came in to us over the past day or so calling Wolf on an obviously fake email. In short, the message said that Society of Scroll and Key would be opening up the 2010 Delegation to applications.  (!?!)

After the jump, a little bit of banter about Rumpus and the full text of the hoax email.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once again it’s time for another installment of everyone’s favorite chick lit romp through the mystery-filled tomb of Skull & Bones–er, Rose & Grave. Yale Grad (’01) Diana Peterfreund delivers schadenfreude, secret society pranks and sex (okay, foreplay) on the beach in Rites of Spring (Break), the latest book in her “Ivy League Novel “ quartet, out from Delta Fiction earlier this month.

“Eli” (read: Yale) University senior Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel is panicked about graduation. But when she and her fellow Rose & Grave knights pull a prank on rival society Dragon’s Head, Amy winds up with a lot more to worry about than her lack of job offers. Dragon’s Head wants revenge, and they’ve chosen Amy as their target. After months of dye in her shampoo, crickets in her dorm suite, and soda dumped on her textbooks, Amy is more than ready to party it up during Spring Break. Rather than Cancun, our plucky heroine heads for Cavador Key, her secret society’s private island. But Cavador Key isn’t exactly drama free, either. Someone has infiltrated the island, and Amy must dodge death threats, bad seafood, and the prying eyes of her society members as she starts hooking up with Jamie, a society patriarch who avid fans will remember as the villain from past books in the series.

Along with the gang from previous books (including a governor’s playboy son, a former teen actress, a lesbian activist, a straight-edge genius computer programmer and a Manhattan socialite), Peterfreund adds another gem to the cast of society types we love to hate: Darren, the high school-aged son of society patriarch and disgraced senator, who proclaims of Aristotle, “I find his tone to be remarkably jejune.”

Rites of Spring (Break) is the perfect beach read for Ivy Leaguers who want a break from academia, but not from campus drama. Peterfreund has created a sympathetic and spirited heroine who, despite her annoying penchant for confessions and lists, you kind of wish you became friends with back in lit hum. In spite of the peppy cover, poppy narrative and preppy undertones, Peterfreund definitely knows how to create suspense. And her—I mean, Amy’s–thoughts on the impending doom of graduation are uncomfortably on the mark:

The biggest problem with being a relatively small fish in the best pond ever is that you start to lower your own expectations. Maybe if I’d gone to a smaller school, or a less prestigious school, I’d have convinced myself that I was still the hotshot I was as a high school valedictorian headed to an Ivy League college. Instead, I’d spent three years recalibrating my dreams to fit into the caste that the resident geniuses at Eli had shown me to be a part of. Above average, to be sure, but not summa.”

There were a few too many loose ends for my taste (but then again, my taste isn’t exactly romance novels, so maybe I’m off course), and a couple of lines that made me snort (and not in an ‘oh, that’s funny’ way), but overall, if you’re looking for a book to toss in your tote on the way to Cape Cod, or just want to convince yourself that being a Philo pwns the shit out of being in a real secret society, this is a pretty good pick.

We didn’t want you to go on summer break without first knowing which Yalies got into those fantabulous secret societies! Like, your entire summer would be ruined! Sure, that first Skull and Bones list we posted was a total fake-out (only one correct name in the end!) – but who really cared? Here are the society lists, forealz.

We wish these kids the best. As long as the new members of Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones and Wolf’s Head don’t paint their theses with the blood of aborted fetuses, or make giant swastikas out of snow, or construct giant penises out of Christmas lights, or have enormous flame-wars with their gay lovers on our comment boards, or go to war in Iraq because they’re “deciders,” they’re fine by us.

After the jump: the not-so-secret society lists in full.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since no Bonesman is allowed to ‘fess up to being one, the organization is, by necessity, unable to denounce frauds. Consequently, it is really easy to play jokes on them. Yale pre-frosh Princeton Ji Chang (not to be confused with Princeton freshman Princeton Kwong; apparently there was a bubble of Princetons born around 1990) stumbled across a group of “Bonesmen” offering photo-ops during Bulldog Days:

So here I am, young, impressionable Princeton Ji Chang, walkin’ round Yale during orientation week [Bulldog Days] when — suddenly and without warning — a bunch of cloaked Skull-and-Bonesmen came up to me! Apparently they were holding a fundraiser: $2 polaroids, and $0.25 autographs. So, of course, I totally took a picture with them in front of their creepy building (i think they call it a tomb or something?). Anyway, the picture’s great. But the whole thing struck me as a little odd – does Skull and Bones really need to be doing fundraising? And do they always wear such creepy clothes?

Nah. Usually they just pop the collars on their vampire capes and call it a day.