Sorry, tin-foil-hat brigade. Turns out that Bones’ grisly human skull ballot box and its accompanying revelatory black book will not see the light of day after all. Christie’s recently cancelled the upcoming auction, withdrawing the items after receiving a mysterious “title claim.” Speculation: Maybe Skull and Bones wanted it back to use as a quirky mint jar? The skull’s enigmatic “European art dealer” owner absconded to the Maldives? Christie’s realized that nobody in their right mind would pay $20,000 for a moldy piece of irrelevant memorabilia?

Or, to quote Stephen Colbert:

“You should have seen where they stuffed the ballots before the guy died.”

Through all this, we’re still a little confused as to why nobody has asked the obvious question: Who’s godforsaken skull is this, anyway? Were these post-mortem shenanigans in his will? Was he an organ donor?

Maybe we’re off-base here, but we’re pretty sure that human corpse theft–especially for use in a college clubhouse–might warrant a little investigation. Are the CSI folks available?

Controversial Yale alum Hyder Akbar (or friends thereof) is infiltrating and undermining the cyber-symbiosis of Wikipedia.

According to a Wikipedia editor-turned-whistleblower, Hyder’s Wikipedia entry is being mysteriously and repeatedly cleansed of any reference to his unfortunate arson incident.

Usernames ‘Brucebruceemily1,’ Brucebruceemily12‘, ‘Brucebruceemily123,’ (points for variety), and ‘Okaythen1‘ have been particularly delete-key-happy, at all hours of the day and night. Their nemeses, the honest Wikipedian editors, are at their wits’ end. One of them, ‘Hellomontana‘, pleads to the censors:

Don’t take off this part, it’s well documented and relevant.

Thus ensues a repeated back-and-forth copy/pasting duel. All in all, the flag-burning incident has been deleted from the site over eight times. One Hyder-happy censor even replaced a sentence about the obviously-significant crime with a list of his literary accolades. (How helpful!) An editor of the embattled page, clearly frustrated, contacted us with the story.

Nothing warms our hearts more than finding out that our old friends are keeping busy: namely, by editing teh Internet and crafting misleading online articles in order to self-promote and dodge public responsibility for drunken disrespectfulness. But if you thought there was nothing less classy than creating and editing your own hagiographical Wikipedia page (or burning a flag during wartime), then check out Hyder’s own ironic, pretentious, anti-American, and yet hilarious words, along with the Yale connection. After the jump.

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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.

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Here’s a (kind of boring) look inside of Skull & Bones. Layered with a Requiem-for-a-Dream-like dramatic soundtrack, this video tracks some iPhone-toting legionnaire venturing into the basement and courtyard of Yale’s oldest secret society. Unfortunately, the hypersecretive society doesn’t have too many skeletons in their closet. They do have a couple of barbecue grills, some windy stone stairs, lots of dust, and a coffin. That part is actually kind of cool. Any chance Gdub once slept there?

For the record, this may or may not be the Tomb. It looks like Yale with all those pointed arches and stuff. But we were really hoping to see Geronimo’s skull.

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.

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Controversy is brewing around Skull and Bones, the laughably un-secret secret society par excellence at Yale. Descendants of Geronimo, the 19th century Apache warrior, are suing the shadowy senior club for allegedly stealing the remains of their ancestor in 1918, and for keeping it at their New Haven tomb ever since.

MSNBC writes that

According to lore, members of Skull and Bones — including former President George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush — dug up his grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale was stationed at the fort during World War I, taking his skull and some of his bones.

The skull evidently now sits in a glass display nicknamed, well, “Geronimo.” Those tapped might even have to kiss the contested skull to join the super-secret society.This rumor has gained more traction in recent years, since in 2005

Yale historian Marc Wortman discovered a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another that seemed to lend validity to the tale. The letter, sent to F. Trubee Davison by Winter Mead, said Geronimo’s skull and other remains were taken from the leader’s burial site, along with several pieces of tack for a horse. ‘The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer, is now safe inside the T — together with is well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn,’ Mead wrote.

Read what the Geronimo family thinks after the jump.

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IvyGate is camped out in the Barnard quad, watching (and liveblogging) Gossip Girl along with a bevy of enthralled Barnard girls.  And yes, this is the episode where Gossip Girl decided to film at Columbia and call it Yale.

8:01:  It’s starting!  Everyone is cheering.  This is going to be a long hour.

8:02  Apparently all of the characters are going to visit Yale.  Time to pile into their town cars and tell their maids to pack some argyle sweaters in their monogram luggage.

8:03: Oh, snap.  Serena just claimed that “Yale is for overachieving bookworms and preppies.”  Um…just Yale?

8:05:  “I heard Marc Jacobs named a purse after her” –Dorota, the housekeeper, on Serena.  Because we can’t all be BryanBoy.

8:08:  Chuck Bass wants to bone a bunch of women’s studies majors. A girl in the lounge whoops and yells “Barnard!”

8:09:  Apparently Chuck has a very different idea about the “freshman fifteen” than most of us.

Read more, after the jump:
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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.

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.

Yale, can you feel the excitement? It’s secret society tapping season! Last night Tonight is “pre-tap,” which is when society members alert desired members to their sought-after status, and we have here an exclusive leak on Skull & Bones’ list! Pre-tap-ees get a week to choose whether or not to accept. Should any decline, our tipster says the alternates are

Meghan Murphy, Andrew Mangino (Editor in chief of YDN), and Michael Losak, in that order. 

So, if the last three really want to be Boners, they now have a hitlist and estimation of how many of their peers they have to destroy to get in. Someone should make a reality tv show out of this.

As for the likelihood that the above is true, well, your guess is as good as mine. Yale-based readers can hash it out in the comments. But I googled the first guy and found an article about his “Patrick Bateman-approved bachelor pad,” so that bodes well.

UPDATE: Whoops, tap is tonight, not last night. Apologies to confused tap-ees and/or anyone who burst into tears because they thought nobody wanted them. You have a whole new 24-hour cycle to wait anxiously through!