THE oldest secret society at Yale is Phi Beta Kappa. It may seem curious at present to think of the learned society as a secret fraternity but such it was from its first year at Yale in 1780 down to 1825 and it is more truly in many ways the predecessor of the modem fraternity than are the ungainly open societies that preceded it at Yale. Chi Delta Theta was also a secret fraternity for many years and the societies that succeeded these two always maintained at least a political interest in things intellectual.
The whole question of societies and fraternities and their place on the campus does not seem today to be the leading question that it was fifty years ago. At that time, or approximately then, appeared the greatest book on Yale life that has ever been written in the way of a compilation of facts. “Four Years at Yale” devotes the first 186 pages to societies and only in what follows deals with student life in general. Probably the best way to understand the changes is to visualize the situation in the early 70’s.
At the top of the system were the two Senior societies, Bones and Keys, then as now taking fifteen members each, elected at the end of junior year. These societies were local and entirely secret. Bones, which was originally Skull and Bone, was founded by fifteen men of the Class of 1833 as a result, it is said, of some injustice in the Phi Beta Kappa elections so that in another way Phi Beta Kappa may be considered the unintentional sponsor for the system. There was never any pledging or discussion of elections which were given out on a Thursday evening in the individual rooms. A sharp distinction from all other societies except Keys which was modeled exactly upon Bones lay in the fact that graduates attended initiations and commencement dinners in large numbers. Keys and an unsuccessful society called Spade and Grave were the only other Senior societies at the time. Spade and Grave started as the result of a quarrel between three Bones editors of the Yale Lit and two non-society editors, but was soon buried.
In Junior year there were three fraternities, Alpha Delta Phi, Psi U and DKE, all established between 1836 and 1844. In the 70’s the last two had what were considered extravagant houses, one on High street and the other on York of which the more elaborate was valued at nearly $15,000. These junior societies were chapters of national fraternities and took about thirty men each. Their chief function seems to have been to engineer the election of the Wooden Spoon Committee and the Yale Lit editors. There were nine men on the former and five of the latter. Coalitions between various pairs of societies always determined who should be the Spoon man and the editor in chief of the Lit. Beyond this political function the only object of the fraternities seems to have been self-perpetuation. So far as we can judge there was absolutely no fraternity feeling. Only the Junior Class members were interested or attended meetings. There was no Senior delegation at all.
In Sophomore year we find the societies which really created some intense interest. Kappa Sigma Theta and Alpha Sigma Phi had died out. But the result of a ruction between Psi U and DKE in 1864 had produced two societies known as Phi Theta Psi and Delta Beta Xi, vouched for by no lesser notables than Professor Thacher and Cyrus Northrop. The motto of the former was the familiar but tantalizing amici usque ad aras. Freshmen were pledged for these societies early in the year, about thirty to each. There was a notification night preceded by marching on the campus with dark lanterns and songs outside the rooms of the chosen. The Freshmen furnished the banquets. Initiations were secret and inside the houses, followed by a play and dinner. The meetings were on Friday and the graduates had nothing to do with the fraternities except by invitation. In these Sophomore societies are to be found most of the traditions which have continued in the modern fraternities and they rather than the junior fraternities were the hunting grounds of the Senior society campaigners. Probably this was one of the reasons why they and one or two others founded later were short lived. They were the step in the pyramid around which centered the most severe general criticism, especially that which came from the faculty who in those days wielded rather a big stick.
At the bottom of the social pyramid were the Freshman societies Kappa Sigma Epsilon, Delta Kappa, and Gamma Nu. The last was an open society, the other two semi-secret. At first in the 40’s the membership of a Freshman society had been twenty but in the 70’s the whole class was divided between the three societies after a vigorous campaign for the best men which extended back into pre-college days. One blackball rejected a man but every Freshman must belong to one of the three societies! How this worked out is something of a puzzle today. These Freshman societies tried to extend themselves to other colleges as the fraternities had done, but without much success. At some period certain schools regularly supplied particular societies. There was some open hazing of candidates, and each initiate was in charge of one Sophomore to see that life did not become dull for him at any moment.
Such in abstract was the society situation fifty years ago. The two great debating societies so-called, Linonia and Brothers in Unity, established in the middle of the eighteenth century, were purely voluntary and included all four years. They had rooms in Alumni Hall, held debates and listened to orations, poems, and essays. Their chief treasures were their libraries, which were kept in the wings of the old library. They had over 13,000 books each in 1870. There was a reading room supported by the societies and run by the College in the central part of South Middle with space for the College Book Store. On the racks of the reading room were to be found one hundred and twenty periodicals, including Punch. A tax of $8.00 per annum was assessed on the members, and the reading room was presided over by an “indigent student.” This reading room superseded a newspaper rack in the bowling alleys of the old gymnasium.
The evolution from this situation of the 70’s to the present day social system is fairly obvious. The general societies, Linonia and Brothers, have become in part a library collection, in part mere names in Harkness Quadrangle. The most iron clad democracy could not maintain “societies” that took in every one of the increasingly numerous boys that came to Yale. Phi Beta Kappa, the source of the whole trouble, is now a respected badge of scholarship. At the bottom of the pyramid the great unwieldy Freshman societies died in the 80’s. There seems to have been some merciful assistance given them from without to hasten their last moments, and the assistance was even more effective in the case of the Sophomore societies, which died a little later. There soon sprang into existence, however, a new group of Sophomore societies taking in fifteen men apiece and quite obviously out of tune with the pyramid principle. Hé Boulé, Eta Phi, and Kappa Psi formed a group of forty-five men who quite regularly stuck together and furnished the material for the three Senior societies (Wolf’s Head had been founded meanwhile). Quite obviously they injured the system in two ways. In the first place they selected and established a chosen group early in the college course, shattering the existing ideals of democracy. In the second place they produced something of a continuity of experience which the old class system of societies had, in the interests of class spirit, prevented. They were abolished by faculty action in 1902, and the present system really dates from that time. With no Sophomore or Freshman societies the Junior fraternities slipped down to the beginning of Sophomore year, and in place of a pyramid there came into being a large group of fraternities with continuous existence through three years, the group of smaller senior societies in the final year continuing as before.
From this survey of the situation fifty years ago and now it is clear that most of our older customs and methods are more or less intact although they now belong to different organizations and different kinds of organization. The fixed element amongst the many changes has been the Senior society and even there the Elihu Club has introduced some relaxation of the old austerity. In spite of external resemblances in custom and tradition the fraternities have largely reversed the theory of the early years that only the members of a given class should be interested in a given society. The delegation system inside of the fraternities is, however, a direct outcome of this old theory, a trait persisting within a system which has practically discarded the theory as a whole.
One distinct change is to be found in the present day principle that in general less than half of a class should be comprised within the fraternities. In the 70’ s everybody belonged to a Freshman society and a good deal more than half the class to a Junior society. The modern principle is different.
Fraternities have increased in numbers in the College but only in proportion with the growth of the College. From decade to decade the Sophomore societies were always a little out of gear with the rest of the system. A curious incongruity in the system of the 70’s, namely the appearance of fraternities as the junior group in the society system, probably accounts for the traditional difficulty which the Yale chapters have always had with their national organizations.
The fraternal urge was originally connected with scholarly interests. Witness Phi Beta Kappa and Chi Delta Theta. Witness the great debating societies — open and general to be sure, but always cultivating club rivalry. Throughout the history of societies at Yale, and even in the last fifty years, the various organizations have never entirely thrown overboard the principle of intellectual stimulation as an excuse for existence in association with the principles of good fellowship and service to Yale. The relative importance of the various principles is a most variable quantity. In the seventies we are told “the sight of a Phi Beta key would raise a cry of derision.” Today it may be that we have gone too far in the direction of shuffling off onto Phi Beta Kappa, The Elizabethan Club, The Pundits and so on, all the responsibility of carrying our intellectual burden. But still the debates of the old freshman societies, the essays and orations and poems of the others have left their mark on our present society procedure. The descriptions of the absurdities of rushing week in the seventies and in the present decade are interchangeable. The solemnities and the excesses and the constantly renewed agreements — these are all recurring motifs throughout the fifty years.
And what of the resulting situation? Senior Societies still loom overwhelmingly large on the Yale College horizon. In the past they have been the conservation of the best traditions of Yale. Today they do not maintain the standards as they have been reputed to in the earlier days. They must meet the fact that last year more than half their men were taken from the graduates of three preparatory schools and that only two high school men were chosen. They must face the charge that the senior society men are no longer, through the fraternities, establishing standards which in themselves justify their existence.
The Junior Fraternities are confronted today with a considerable body of honest conviction that they are worthless or even harmful at Yale. The foolish, small-town quality of open initiating is to say the least in bad taste. The marked tendency to encourage (some would say compel) drinking on the part of the initiate is intolerable. The open house system now inaugurated has a tendency to increase the drift toward snobbish aloofness.
All true — much of it too true. But the answer is what it always has been and must be. The human animal will make for itself groups within its social confines. The value of the smaller group is to accentuate and perpetuate the best in the larger group. To justify themselves the societies must do this, otherwise they must give way to something better. They can be a blessing to Yale and Yale will not tolerate their being a curse.
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