SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY
FOUNDED: 1832
STATUS: Active
EXCLUSIVITY FACTOR: High—only fifteen students are initiated each year.
SECRECY FACTOR: Medium—members’ names are public, but their meetings and some of their rituals are not.
THREAT FACTOR: Potentially high—the members often go on to hold positions in the highest echelons of power.
QUIRK FACTOR: Low. Nothing quirky about preppies.
HISTORY AND BACKGROUND
Long before Harvard spawned Facebook, there was a much more exclusive Ivy League social network: Yale’s legendary Skull and Bones Society. It was founded by two seniors, Alphonso Taft (father of the 27th US president) and valedictorian William Huntington Russell in 1832. Russell was disgruntled about not receiving an invitation to the prestigious academic secret society Phi Beta Kappa, so he retaliated by forming Skull and Bones, which grew to be just as esteemed as Phi Beta Kappa and even more mysterious.
Skull and Bones pays obeisance to Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence—which is ironic, because members are forbidden to speak about the club and are even instructed to get up and leave the room if the society comes up in conversation. Legend has it that Eulogia took her place in the pantheon in 322 B.C., and she returned in a kind of second coming on the occasion of the society’s inception. This is why the number 322 appears in the society’s skull and crossbones logo.
The society is known informally as “Bones,” and members are known as “Bonesmen” (which is better than “Boners”). Just fifteen Bonesmen are chosen from every senior class, but out of this relatively small group has come a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s most powerful leaders. Over the years, Bones has included presidents, cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court justices, and captains of industry.
Indeed, the mystique surrounding Skull and Bones sets it apart from Yale’s other secret societies, among them being Scroll and Key, Wolf ’s Head, Book and Snake, Mace and Chain, and Berzelius. Landed societies, like Bones, have buildings on campus. Their headquarters is a brown sandstone mausoleum known as the Tomb: a crypt-like, windowless structure that is strictly off-limits to non-members.
The most private room in the building is known as the Inner Temple, or Room 322. Behind the locked iron door is a case holding a skeleton that the Bonesmen call Madame Pompadour. Along with her remains, the case contains the society’s cherished manuscripts, including the secrecy oath and instructions for conducting an initiation—a ritual in which they are said to use human remains.
There certainly is no shortage of bones inside of the Tomb. It is decorated with dozens of dangling skeletons and skulls and other macabre relics. Chiseled on the walls are German and Latin phrases such as Whether poor or rich, all are equal in death.
But while rich and poor may be equal in death, that’s not necessarily so in life. The wealth, privilege, and power enjoyed by Bonesmen has sparked many conspiracy theories about the group. Skull and Bones has been implicated in everything from the creation of the nuclear bomb to the Kennedy assassination.
MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS
Picture this: It’s springtime of your junior year, and you’re taking a nighttime stroll around campus. Suddenly, you are approached by a group of masked seniors who force you into a black limousine and offer to take you back to their tomb. Would you accept the invitation? Many Yalies would, happily. This process of “tapping” is how Skull and Bones singles out potential members.
“Tap Night” works a bit like the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books—it’s when juniors are invited to join the society that is the best fit for them, with Skull and Bones being the most prestigious of the bunch (though disturbingly similar to Slytherin in some ways). Years ago, the tapper would order the tappee to “Go to your room,” and then extend the formal invitation to join the club in the privacy of the tappee’s dorm room. If the tappee accepted the invitation—and he almost always did—he was promptly inducted into the society that very day.
Tap Night is a slightly more raucous affair these days, with contenders for Skull and Bones and Yale’s other secret societies running around campus in Halloween-like costumes. It may be preceded by interviews and “pre-taps,” giving the tappers and the tappees a chance to test the waters before committing to a society.
So who gets tapped for Skull and Bones? Historically, young men from the richest and most powerful families were prize picks. Relatives of Bonesmen also got preference. Even in the late 1960s, when many of Yale’s other senior societies had adopted more progressive practices, Bones was still a boys’ club with a reputation of choosing the same kinds of people, year after year. In an article in the 1968 Yale yearbook, Lanny Davis, a 1967 Yale graduate and a secret society member who would go on to become a White House special counsel in the Clinton Administration, described their selection process as follows:
If the society had a good year, this is what the “ideal” group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies’ man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever.
Today, the Skull and Bones roster is not quite so predictable, nor is it as dependent on class and blood ties. It is still elite and selective, but with a focus on inducting student leaders from various backgrounds. In 1991, they voted to allow women in (by a narrow margin), and recent groups of induct-ees are usually divided equally between men and women and almost always include Hispanic, Asian, African American, and LGBT students. What these members have in common is that they seem poised to go on to positions of great power, which is the purpose behind this secret society.
INSIDE SKULL AND BONES
Bonesmen meet in the Tomb two evenings per week, as they have done since the dawn of the order. They spend one of the nights socializing and the other debating cultural and political affairs. But details of what goes on behind Tomb doors are unknown to most outsiders. Because members take an oath of secrecy, persuading one to speak to the press is tough. Alexandra Robbins, author of the Skull and Bones exposé Secrets of the Tomb, says that the majority of the Bonesmen she contacted refused to speak to her, and some even harassed and threatened her. However, she did manage to glean this information about their initiation ritual, which apparently features an interesting group of characters:
There is a devil, a Don Quixote and a Pope who has one foot sheathed in a white monogrammed slipper resting on a stone skull. The initiates are led into the room one at a time. And once an initiate is inside, the Bones-men shriek at him. Finally, the Bonesman is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silent. And Don Quixote lifts his sword and taps the Bonesman on his left shoulder and says, “By order of our order, I dub thee knight of Eulogia.”
Journalist Ron Rosenbaum wasn’t permitted such access, so he hid out on the roof of a neighboring building and surreptitiously videotaped a nocturnal initiation ceremony in the Tomb’s courtyard. He described it thus: “A woman holds a knife and pretends to slash the throat of another person lying down before them, and there’s screaming and yelling at the neophytes.”
Rosenbaum has been obsessed with Bones ever since his days at Yale as a classmate to George W. Bush. He longed to get inside their clubhouse. “I had passed it all the time,” says Rosenbaum. “During the initiation rites, you could hear strange cries and whispers coming from the Skull and Bones tomb.”
Whatever is going on in there, it was once considered very unladylike. “There were rituals that some women would find offensive,” says a Bonesman from the 1960s, who refused to elaborate. “Some [alumni] wanted to fight to make sure those traditions didn’t have to change.” Could he be referring to the longstanding rumor that Bonesmen masturbate inside of coffins? Or something even more sinister?
Though members of Skull and Bones refuse to speak openly about their society to outsiders, they are required to reveal their innermost secrets to fellow initiates. In a ritual called “connubial bliss,” the brand new Bones-men would gather round the fireplace and recount their entire sexual and romantic histories. Today, this ritual has evolved from an X-rated affair to a PG-13 party where each new member delivers an oral autobiography, a time-consuming event meant to forge friendship. Either way, knowing all of each other’s deepest, darkest secrets is a kind of protection.
Bonesmen know each other by code names. Long Devil is assigned to the tallest member; Boaz (short for Beelzebub) is bestowed upon anyone who is a varsity football captain. Other names are drawn from literature (Hamlet, Uncle Remus), from religion, and from myth. The name Magog is traditionally assigned to the incoming Bonesman with the most sexual experience, and Gog goes to the new member with the least. William Howard Taft and Robert Taft were Magogs. So was George H. W. Bush, difficult as that may be to imagine—apparently, his undergrad antics would have had Barbara clutching her pearls. Their son George W. was not assigned a name, but invited to choose one. Nothing came to mind, so he was given the name “Temporary,” which he never bothered to replace.
George W.’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, made a more permanent contribution to Skull and Bones lore. Bones and other Yale societies have a reputation for stealing from each other or from campus buildings. They have a charming name for this thievery: “crooking.” During the first World War, prankster Prescott Bush and some of his fellow Bonesmen are believed to have “crooked” the grave of the great Apache warrior Geronimo. His skull is reportedly kept in a glass case by the front door of the Tomb.
More human remains decorate the interior walls: skeletons, skulls, and other ghoulish ornaments, along with portraits of distinguished members. To continue with the Harry Potter comparisons, it sounds rather like Hogwarts meets haunted house, though a recent infiltrator said the inside of the Tomb looked “something like a German beer hall.”
Members of other societies who have managed to break into the Tomb describe a tunnel leading to a chamber with a coffin. There is also a room with candles, a chopping-block, and a basin with two carved skeletal figures leaning over it full of red liquid. They say the place is infested with bats. In the garden, a statue of a knight looms over barbeque grills. Adding to the Goth-frat atmosphere is the stolen gravestone of Elihu Yale, the eighteenth-century merchant that the University is named for, displayed in a glass case in a room with purple walls. A 1980s Bonesman described the Tomb as “a place that used to be really nice but felt kind of beat up, lived in.”
The decaying grandeur extends to Deer Island, a Bones-owned island on the St. Lawrence River. Robbins describes the place as follows:
The forty-acre retreat is intended to give Bonesmen an opportunity to “get together and rekindle old friendships.” A century ago the island sported tennis courts and its softball fields were surrounded by rhubarb plants and gooseberry bushes. Catboats waited on the lake. Stewards catered elegant meals. But although each new Skull and Bones member still visits Deer Island, the place leaves something to be desired. “Now it is just a bunch of burned-out stone buildings,” a patriarch sighs. “It’s basically ruins.” Another Bonesman says that to call the island “rustic” would be to glorify it. “It’s a dump, but it’s beautiful.”
THESE BONES GET ALL THE BREAKS
Bonesmen can be found in virtually every sphere of influence, from Wall Street to the White House. Here are some of the especially impressive movers and shakers who were members of the club.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, CLASS OF 1878
Known as “Big Lub” to his college buddies, he was a shoo-in for Bones since his father co-founded the society. He went on to become the first Bonesman ever to reach The Oval Office.
AMOS ALONZO STAGG, CLASS OF 1888
Stagg practically invented the modern game of football, but his athletic prowess didn’t stop there: To this day, he is the only man to be elected into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Basketball Hall of Fame.
HENRY SLOANE COFFIN, CLASS OF 1897
His morbid name may have gotten him in the door, but in a club full of WASPs, this guy rose to the top by becoming leader of the Presbyterian Church.
PERCY ROCKEFELLER, CLASS OF 1900
Naturally, one of the most powerful families in the US would contain at least one Bonesman: Percy went on to be a New York lawyer, oil man, and gun dealer.
PRESCOTT BUSH, CLASS OF 1916
Legend has it that before he became a United States senator, Prescott and his Bonesman pals dug up and absconded with the skull of the famous Native American warrior Geronimo.
H.J. HEINZ II, CLASS OF 1931
Your French fries wouldn’t be the same without him. The ketchup heir was also father of a US Senator.
GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, CLASS OF 1948
Before he became the leader of the free world (and the second Bonesman to achieve that feat), George H. W. Bush had a distinguished career in government service, including a tenure as Director of the CIA. Who better than a Bonesman to keep national security secrets under wraps?
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, CLASS OF 1950
The highly influential conservative American author and commentator was a stickler for tradition in the Tomb—the day before women were set to be admitted to the club, he obtained a court order to keep out the co-eds, insisting that letting in women would lead to rape.
FREDERICK W. SMITH, CLASS OF 1966
Bonesmen have the world in the palms of their hands—and this one promises “The World on Time” as the founder, chairman, president, and CEO of FedEx.
JOHN F. KERRY, CLASS OF 1966
The Massachusetts senator, Secretary of State, and debatably heroic Vietnam War veteran challenged fellow Bonesman George W. Bush with a presidential bid in 2004.
GEORGE W. BUSH, CLASS OF 1968
He wasn’t just a cheerleader at Yale—peppy campus party boy “W” joined the family club and went on to become the third Bonesman to occupy the office of US President.
PAUL GIAMATTI, CLASS OF 1989
The Academy Award-nominated actor known for playing rather schlubby characters may not seem like your typical Bonesman, but his father was once president of Yale. He showed his high-society roots as part of the cast of Downton Abbey. 
THE BULLINGDON CLUB
EST. 1780 AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY
This highly exclusive all-male drinking club does nothing to dispel the perception of Oxford students as arrogant, over-privileged prats. Besides having the correct breeding, Bullingdon members must have an iron gut. At a boozy annual breakfast, barf bags are distributed to prevent members from having to leave the table to vomit (a club offense). Even more stomach-turning is the Bullingdon tradition of trashing unsuspecting restaurants—smashing china, throwing food, and generally leaving the places in ruins. The wealthy and well-connected club members always pay for the damage, but they are unapologetic about their destructive antics. A great number of British aristocrats have participated in these traditions, including Prime Minister David Cameron and London mayor Boris Johnson. A 2014 movie about Bullingdon called The Riot Club has university officials concerned about their reputation.
THE CADAVER SOCIETY
EST. 1957 AT WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY
It’s said that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead—but the members of the Cadaver Society have succeeded in keeping their club very hush-hush. The group is thought to be made up of mostly pre-med students, which may account for their namesake. When playing nocturnal pranks, they wear black capes to conceal their identities, and they leave their ominous mark—a letter “C” with a skull inside—around campus. But on the lighter side, the Cadavers contribute great sums of money to the university, which has gone toward scholarships and campus improvements, including a bridge named after their club.
THE FLAT HAT CLUB
EST. 1750 AT THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY
Formally known as The FHC Society, America’s first collegiate secret society is so old that America wasn’t even a country when it began. The initials FHC probably stood for something in Latin, but whatever it was has been lost to the ages in favor of the more humorous “Flat Hat Club.” The hats in question were the mortarboards worn by William & Mary students in the 18th century (the ones we only have to wear on graduation day now). Founding father Thomas Jefferson was one of the club’s early members. He recalled:
When I was a student of Wm. & Mary college of this state, there existed a society called the F.H.C. society, confined to the number of six students only, of which I was a member, but it had no useful object, nor do I know whether it now exists.
Either Jefferson’s time in the FHC was not particularly memorable, or he was just being very guarded with the society’s secrets.
THE HOT FOOT SOCIETY
EST. 1902 AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
The time: Mardi Gras, 1902. The place: the campus of the University of Virginia. Whereas festivals of merriment and excess were already not uncommon on college campuses on the occasion of Fat Tuesday, the Hot Feet went furthest and partied hardest. Their ritualized events (soon to become hallowed traditions within the society) even culminated with the election of a “king.”
It didn’t take long for the Hot Foot Society to gain a bit of a reputation — which is saying something, especially considering the antics of the University of Virginia’s other secret societies of the time, whose signs and symbols could be found scrawled across campus buildings on many occasions. But in 1911, the Hot Feet took things just a bit too far. After a night of presumably heavy drinking, club members went on a vandalism spree, “redecorating” school classrooms and stealing a chamber pot, which was repurposed as the club’s ceremonial stein. The administration was none too pleased with this wild escapade, and they came back with the following statement:
The Hot Foot Society has been, on the whole, very detrimental to the University’s welfare, and it is, therefore, unanimously resolved that the existence of the Hot Foot Society, and of all other organizations which promote disorder in the University, shall be forbidden.
With the demise of the Hot Feet, some former members went on to form the IMP Society in 1913, an organization dedicated to preserving the activities they’d come to enjoy, but in slightly more subdued fashion. The IMP Society’s mission involves “spreading revelry around Grounds through recognition events of students and faculty, annual community service grants, and other fellowship initiatives.” The IMPs also took the lead in welcoming women and blacks to join their club when other clubs at the university kept them out.
THE IVY CLUB
EST. 1879 AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
The Ivy isn’t a secret society but the first of Princeton’s many eating clubs. If these clubs were too clandestine, there would be a lot of hungry students on campus, as the majority of upperclassmen take their meals at such establishments to this day.
The original eating clubs came about quite organically, as the student population (and its appetite) grew to a size that the university simply could not accommodate in the dining hall. Students naturally looked to off-campus options for their meals and found a number of boardinghouses that were eager for their business. These meals became social occasions, and the students began to organize into groups, complete with names and traditions of their own. The Ivy Club was founded in 1879 by a group of upperclassmen interested in an even more formal dining routine. It was eventually incorporated, with the college’s permission, and established a permanent residence on Prospect Avenue, where other eating clubs soon set up shop.
All of these various clubs developed distinct group personalities over time. In his first novel, This Side of Paradise, Princeton alum Scott Fitzgerald gave a description of some of them:
Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic; Cottage, an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by an honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant Colonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age and position.
So how does one get access to the grub? Some eating clubs handpick new members through “bicker,” a multi-night process said to be named for the bickering over which applicants to accept. Some operate on a lottery system. Most members agree that in addition to food, the clubs provide a lot of fun.
THE ORDER OF GIMGHOUL
EST. 1889 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA-CHAPEL HILL
Lots of secret societies have fortress-like headquarters, but this one has an actual castle. Gimghoul Castle, built in 1926 in the woods of Chapel Hill, is an appropriate home base for the men in this invite-only society, which has roots that recall a gothic novel. As the story goes, UNC student Peter Dromgoole died in a duel, leaving a bloodstain on a rock in Battle Park. The tale inspired five students to form the Order of Dromgoole in 1889. According to William W. Davies, one of the original founders, the name was quickly changed to Gimghoul because it was in “accord with midnight and graves and weirdness.” The order perpetuates the weirdness with rituals like dressing in hoods on Halloween night and appearing in Forest Theatre, a popular place for suicides, carrying candles and chanting.
ORTHOGONIAN SOCIETY
EST. 1929 AT WHITTIER COLLEGE
Before he became 37th US President, Richard Nixon was denied admittance to Whittier’s elite Franklin Club. Not one to be easily defeated, the scrap-py freshman brushed off the rejection and helped form the Orthogonians, which means “Square Shooters”—a club for working-class students. The group was founded on the principles of striving for excellence and staying true to oneself, performs community service and fundraising, and produces many student and athletic leaders.
THE PORCELLIAN CLUB
EST. 1791 AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
“The Porc” is Harvard’s premier finals club, open only to men. Women can’t even cross the threshold of their clubhouse, which is filled with pig memorabilia such as mounted wild boar’s heads and a library full of books about pigs. Potential members are evaluated during “punches”: elegant weekend outings involving football, drinking, skeet-shooting, and other leisurely pursuits, often on the estate of a wealthy alumnus of the club. And there’s no shortage of wealthy alum—Theodore Roosevelt was a member, as were twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who sued Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook (the Porc makes a cameo appearance in The Social Network, the movie detailing this drama). Wealth and breeding still figure in to eligibility for the club, but for those less fortunate members, it is rumored that the Porcellian presents all members who have not yet achieved economic success by age 30 with an expensive birthday gift—a cool one million dollars.
QUILL AND DAGGER
EST. 1893 AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Ever hear that old phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”? Well, put ‘em together and you’ve got a secret society mighty enough to last over a century. Quill and Dagger is a highly prestigious honors society granting membership only to Cornell’s best and brightest. It was the first Ivy League secret society to offer membership to women. Members, who meet in the society’s elegant tower on campus, are so close they allegedly call each other “soul-mates.” Along with their rival secret society, Sphinx Head, Quill and Dagger is dedicated to quietly improving Cornell through community service, erecting memorials on campus, and contributing to university traditions (for example, a Quill and Dagger member wrote the Cornell fight song). Many buildings on Cornell’s campus are named after prominent alumni of Quill and Dagger.
TRUST OF THE PEARL
EST. ? AT UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Entrance into the ranks of this very secret society is considered the highest honor a UGA sorority sister can attain. If you happen to see a woman in black wearing a strand of pearls on campus, it just might be one of the members, though that list is very small—only five are inducted each spring. To determine whom the inductees will be, it is said that current members perform a rite that involves singing, dancing, and tossing pearls in a fire. The new members’ faces are then revealed in the flames.