Elites within elites: Yale’s Skull and Bones

Student life generally involves a degree of ebullience – with young people away from parental control mostly for the first time – and in the traditional British universities that was largely within the residential colleges, with each displaying its own subculture, rituals and practices. Within those colleges, diverse student societies or clubs were founded, with some being highly intellectual, political or sporty and even highly secretive, while some were boisterous and indulged in excesses that have been well documented in college records, news reports, fiction, films and memoirs. Although most Anglo-American universities were traditionally for the elite, there were always distinctions, with an exclusive elite of ‘Brahmins’ within a ‘caste’-like system. There might, for example, be a distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new elite’, as in the UK tracing one’s lineage to the 1066 Norman Conquest or even before (Burton, 2015, p 30). Those distinctions were often apparent in the student dining clubs, debating societies and around certain college sports or pursuits. To emphasize their distinctiveness, certain clubs and societies were highly selective and secretive, with their own premises, as well as having specific rituals and an insider’s vocabulary; and not keeping to those would be sanctioned. For instance, at one time there were around 20 such secret societies at Yale University and some were confined to a specific year cohort; and many of the US elites have been members. A student could also be conveniently a member of a club and of a fraternity but not of two fraternities (Schiff, 2004). There were highly exclusive clubs at Yale with the Scroll and Key (1842) and also the Skull and Bones (1832), known as ‘Bones’, which was only for ‘seniors’ (in the fourth year at college).

Part of the ‘Bones’ tradition is that members routinely refuse to discuss its activities. Also ‘bonesmen’, as they were and are called, had their own time which was five minutes ahead of standard time. It was, like most societies and fraternities, then comprised exclusively of male ‘WASPS’ (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) while Jewish students were not invited except occasionally for top athletes. The ethos was to forge friendships and connections for life.