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In looking about for a further observance of the general history of the Class it seems proper to count among those changes it saw transpire and those new experiences common to all, an institution not very closely connected with the University, not created at the instance of the faculty or student body, but bringing an amusement and diversion that was quite generally indulged in — namely, Poli’s Theatre. Prior to the coming of the vaudeville performances the succeeding classes of Freshmen and others had made periodic descents in bands upon some dreadful melodrama or cheap comic opera at Proctor’s Theatre, where was to be found more trouble than amusement; but times are now so changed in these affairs that not only is Poli’s a regular resort for students, but it is even said to be a place where New Haven’s superior society and Yale’s Faculty are not above attending.
The mummer’s art that so flourished in the universities situated in the larger cities had not racked the simple souls of Yale before our day. They had been content to read of lutes trimmed to the beating foot and to imitate in cheers the classic chorus of the frogs. The secret societies, however, had long found amusement in giving on their own hallowed stages plays that were not seriously prepared or skillfully performed, and in our middle years the junior Fraternities sought the clamor and the glare of the theatre by the public production of musical comedies, in one of which our classmates appeared as brigands, nymphs, and gallowglasses. It is amazing, now that the enthusiasm of seeing our college favorites in new roles has waned, to think of the bad acting, singing and dancing that an audience, fetched from afar and exhilarated by the conscious presence of its “nice people,” would tolerate. After two performances the Faculty, not outraged at the quality — for that could be forgiven — but fearful of offending puritanism by a toleration of Dionysian revelry, forbade a further trial of the art.
No commentary, however abbreviated, on the life at Yale would be adequate without some allusion to the system of secret societies existing there. The establishment of societies is fixed, although they are continually undergoing a series of changes and developments, thereby indicating some disorder of the social state. When we entered college there were two Sophomore societies that kept the entire Class in a state of unrest throughout Freshman year; their only outward indications being exhibited by machinations in Freshman politics and by their marching in a body, as of course, into the two larger junior societies, Psi Upsilon and Delta Kappa Epsilon. In our junior year a third Sophomore society was started by the members of Ninety-Six, but shortly after our day all these Sophomore societies, having met with a widespread condemnation, were abolished by the Faculty.
At the close of our course Alpha Delta Phi, which had been a general four-year society, was made a junior fraternity, resulting in a shifting in the system to overcome the criticism then prevailing. The Senior secret societies have continued without change, except that there is to be recorded the recent birth of a non-secret Senior group styled the Elihu Club.
The subject of societies is so abundantly, though furtively, discussed in undergraduate days that any consideration of the various views would perhaps be unwelcome here, and the social problem involved is referred to only to cut the ten-year notch in our opinions, and to pause, as we reflect once more upon that powerful undercurrent of Yale life, for the observing of the modifications that a decade of experience and of contact with a different community have made in us.
A comment on the American people has been frequently made that they are inordinately given to forming a multiplicity of secret orders and associations. Certainly in the colleges this propensity has developed to a high degree, and Yale has indulged in it in due proportion. Secret societies abound, especially in preparatory schools, where they are subjected to no very intelligent control. Boys are entranced by the appeal of mysticism newly awakened in a dawning life, and captivated in their unbalanced days by an apparent superiority established by themselves and accepted by the uninitiated. They bring to Yale all the ardor and all the undesirable attitudes that school societies can create, and, with the latter, supply to the social life an element that is in constant conflict with more wholesome influence.
A Yale graduate will be most likely to form an opinion uncolored by loyalty to his fraternity, or without bias as to the society system, if he calmly considers the characteristics of some outside fraternal order of whatever species of Independent Reindeers it may happen to be. The very fact that he himself is not a member—as not many college men join in after years such associations—is an expression of his opinion of their allurements; he knows that their secrets amount to nothing, that their symbolism is the emptiest kind of trumpery. He recognizes the valuable features which abound, — the insurance securities, the commercial opportunities, and the social benefits, — but utterly scouts the serious claims of hidden power in their secrecy. He turns again at this extended day to view the societies of Alma Mater, to discover, doubtless with some shock of surprise, how like in part they are to those fraternal orders viewed with his indulgent eye. True, there is a marked divergence, but on the point of secrecy he finds college men no less ridiculous, except they are not so old and fat.
To turn over the pages of the Yale Banner, or any college year book, is to find emblematic engravings of secret orders with smouldering sarcophagi, exhaling the odor of mystery, skulls, masks, spades, keys to the secret of knowledge, books of sibylline prophecy, and a host of gewgaws that symbolize the ages of credulity and ignorance. The sacred iron doors at Yale no more close on the world than do the wicker wings of a summer barroom; the societies have no secrets, except for the pitiful agreement not to tell the meaning of A.B.C. or the significance of chained hearts and clasped hands.
It cannot be denied that a spirit of mysticism, finding its only expression in tokens of tragedy and darkness, appeals strongly to all men and especially to the spirited and immature temperament of youths. If Yale men take a delight in the allurements and romances of the occult, they are to be allowed that liberty, even at the seat of a university, where it is the business of the Faculty to enlighten the blind, and the practice of a student body to seriously administer the social law. In general the liberty is harmless, but the spectacle is to be tolerated only where it does not interfere or conflict with the wellbeing of the college community. Whether it does so at Yale is the question now raised for our maturer judgments.
It has been stated that but few graduates join fraternal orders. A further reason for this is found in the fact that those orders cannot bestow the favors or inflict the pains that lie in the laps of the college fraternities. In the world at large we have courts of law to govern the conduct of men, and the requirements of the entire community over conduct extend not much beyond the reach of the penal statutes. For the vast admixture of society there are many standards imposed on as many classes, among which the fraternal organizations by their paucity in membership are entirely lost, so that a breach of any particular requirement of a fraternal order not corresponding with a general rule of conduct of the entire community will bring no penalty except from the order. One is permitted to observe a march of decorated Templars without much concern for his own welfare, but at Yale the underclass man lurks to watch a midnight parade as fearful of detection as a Peeping Tom.
The college community is quite differently constituted from the general, and the system of ethics which prevails richly transcends that penumbra closely clinging to the portals of the jail. Undergraduates come largely from a single stratum of society and respond with almost equal sensitiveness to the praise or blame of their fellow-men. Their numbers are few, all are eligible to the same clubs, and most regard an election as a thing greatly to be desired. The secret societies dominate the entire activity of college life, they establish by their elections a system of rewards that are accepted by the community as the highest gifts that man can have for man, and of punishments whose sting no one is too independent to ignore or too degraded to feel. They establish a morale, their imposition of social regulations is accepted by all, and the violation of their rules brings not only the disapproval of the initiated and a failure of election, but shapes the judgment of expectant underclassmen on the propriety of conduct. Whether this situation is deplorable or beneficent is for the moment immaterial; the fact to be noted is that it exists.
The government by a tribunal of public opinion, so constituted, exercises a control, powerful, sustained, and complete, over the behavior of men from the moment they arrive in New Haven as Freshmen; it is powerful only because its standards are high, sustained because it affects a class superior in culture, and complete because it manages men in their most dependent days. This system, unique in its class progression and wholesome in its achievement, is highly valuable. Yet in spite of its wide and efficient control of conduct, and because of its great authority, it has established a certain attitude and exercises some requirements that neither appeal to reason nor freely meet the approval of sober-minded graduates. It is out of the feature of secrecy that there arises a strong doubt.
It has been maintained here that the secret societies have no substantial secrets, and that their claims of the supernatural or of hidden experience are as unreal as they are pretentious, yet the power and the prestige they have gained, coupled with the show of secrecy, give birth to a feeling of superiority and exclusiveness that quite intoxicates. If men want to feel superior and exclusive, of course they may be allowed the opportunity so to indulge their intellects, but when they are the same men whom circumstance has elevated to a position of authority, the maintenance of their attitude may, and in undergraduate days ought to be fairly questioned. That the entire system is conducted with a fostered exclusion is beyond doubt; the countless prohibitions that are imposed on non-members is proof enough. The quality of exclusion is displayed not in an aloofness from non-members, such conduct could be nicely tolerated, but in a pointed commingling, a subtle insistence on a difference, and a constant appreciation of a barrier, perhaps as wilfully raised by the non-member, but certainly the fabric of the other. It may be urged that men need not accept these prohibitions, but the college world does submit to them—the worst being a restriction upon free discussion. The decrees of exclusiveness are administered conjointly with the wholesome rules of conduct, and most men while willingly submitting to the latter feel hotly the effrontery offered in the former, for effrontery and chivalry can be maintained together in any community and they so thrive in Yale’s societies. As the secrecy is false, the exclusiveness is manufactured, and as it is manufactured it is offensive. A proper answer is not given if it be said that no man need feel the exclusion unless he chooses to take it as such, for when a condition is ostentatiously created, as this is, and a prohibition against open recognition is decreed, then exclusiveness is deliberately maintained. Objection arises not out of pique at the assumption of the chosen few but out of the injury submitted to, perhaps weakly, by the uninitiated. In a hundred ways Yale men have been hurt, have received wounds that have smarted even in later years, wounds that could have been avoided only by refraining from entering Yale, and it is difficult to believe that among those who have removed the spectacles of loyalty there are not many who have come to think that the whole system of societies, in so far as they are ‘secret, is prejudicial to the best possible undergraduate life.
The societies at Yale are essentially clubs for the development of friendships, all have the interest of Yale at heart, and election to their number is an honor not lightly considered and a trust not wilfully violated. Their power is great, their influence inspiring. Without secrecy and the offense growing out of it, these clubs would still maintain their high position and authority, and they would remove from life at Yale a feature that long has been an object of criticism and regret.
While the society system has a strong influence on college social life it is still only an undercurrent above which is a stronger, wider stream, rich with experience and opportunity from earliest Freshman days. At a casual glance it seems amazing to think how quickly the members of the Class in Freshman year came to know each other. An universal intimacy sprang up that finds, as we continually observe, no correspondence in the outside world. Mere boys, shy and diffident, from all corners of the country, made up the membership; they were not thrown together by the force of college regulations, but were marshalled in divisions of thirty or so, and yet in no time they were on terms of Nym and Pistol from A to Z. This of course was due to the men coming in groups from the preparatory schools, like Andover and St. Paul’s, and lesser institutions, where they lived in closest relation. Each group stood practically as a unit, so that to know one meant immediately to know all. Those who came singly from remotest towns and isolated high schools soon became attached to and a part of one of the larger groups, with the consequence that from the very start of the course the men gained acquaintances widespread that later were to develop into friendships, fraternities, clubs, and carousals.
Henry Selden Johnson (Yale 1896)
How it looks to us now
A Tabulation of the answers to Hawkes’ circular letter of December, 1905
Herbert E Hawkes
QUESTION VIII
What relative importance would you now place on study and on activities outside the curriculum (e. g., athletics, societies) ?
A few more than half the men answering this question (151) are clear that study is of first importance, very many regarding the outside activities merely as a relish. The sentiment of the entire body of answers is contained in the reply: “1. Study, 2. Social associations with classmates and others, 3. Athletics, 4. Societies.” Other suggestive replies of men who look on study as of primary importance are: “To any one of ordinary intelligence, there seems to be time for both. An honest day’s work every day on the studies and all the rest of the time devoted to outside activities or to recreation would seem to be desirable.” “Study first. Many activities which at college seemed of first importance lose much of that importance in the retrospect.”
A number of men (about 40) seem to place general association with their classmates (including athletic and social activities) in the first place, though the common intellectual interests seems to be the substratum that makes this association valuable, or in fact possible.
“Study is the basis of college life, and indispensable, but the greatest good from the stay at Yale comes in my experience from the constant intercourse with men. Athletics and societies are first-rate mediums through which the pressure of many may cause the individual to modify his peculiarities and faults. Four years at New Haven seeing no one but instructors, and devoting the whole time to study would be less valuable than four years under the present system, with study left out and some regular physical labor substituted as the reason for our presence,—No, on reading this I convert myself to the contrary. The improvement would not come without the mental activity of study. It is absolutely essential.”
The chief complaint against athletics is that comparatively few are encouraged to take part in them. A very common sentiment is expressed by the man who says: “I think athletics should be more generally indulged in and less attention paid to University teams.”
Although the question does not suggest a criticism of the society system, about 20 men add such criticism. Their replies are mostly to the effect either that societies are very much over-emphasized or that they should be abolished. Six of them, however, feel that the societies do more good than harm. Of these six men five were in Senior societies. The only Senior society man to criticize the society system stated the following: “I do not think a man should make a Senior society unless he has a junior appointment.” Of the critics a very few were members of junior societies. Sentiments expressed are as follows: “The fetish of Senior societies seems to me wholly bad. Its evil influence penetrates even the lower grades of preparatory schools.” “Societies (all of them) root and branch should be abolished.” “Societies seem to me of less importance each year.” These from Junior society men who did not make a Senior society. Non-society men who mention them at all criticize severely.
Our epigrammatic member says: “The four things which did me more good than all the curriculum were learning:
1. In Freshman year, that a man is a fool to sport.
2. In Sophomore year, that a ‘pull’ is a great help.
3. In Junior year, that general acquaintance with current affairs is very desirable.
4. In Senior year, that the best man doesn’t always win.”
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