Skull and Bones

The Order of Skull and Bones, once known as The Brotherhood of Death^[1], is a secret society based at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the first of a strong and sustaining group of socieites that rival Phi Beta Kappa, originally a secret society, in worldwide prestige. The society is legally known as the Russell Trust Association.

History

The group was founded in 1832 by Alphonso Taft and William Russell. The first Skull and Bones class, or "cohort," "bonded" the 1832-33academic year. The society was all male until 1992. All new members, as in all Yale societies and most fraternal groups, must withstand an initiation. If Skull and Bones is mentioned today, it is often in light of elite political conspiracy theories concerning use of federal power in the United States of America.

Given its status, interests is always keen in the membership of Skull and Bones. Traditionally, the Yale Daily News published the names of newly "tapped" members of all major secret societies at Yale, but this practice was abandoned during the "student rebellion" of the sixties. It has since been reinstated informally by the campus tabloid The Rumpus. Hence, although the society's current membership rosters and activities are not officially disclosed, the membership is in fact a matter of knowledge among the incoming and outgoing Yale senior class, University administration, active alumni from other societies, and underclassmen. This may be said of the other societies, as well, particularly Wolf's Head and Scroll and Key. University archives has documents, provided by the societies, that would confirm membership.

The society inducts only rising seniors during the late junior year prior to their graduation. By reputation, "Bonesmen" tapped the current football and heavyweight rowing captains as well as notables from the Yale Daily News and Yale Lit before the 1970s. However, the group's decision, after much dispute, to admit women eventually diversified the membership. Numerous undergraduate constituencies are better represented among the recently-tapped membership compared to the cohorts, or delegations, that included the 27th, 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States.

Members meet in the Bones "Tomb" on Thursday and Sunday evenings of each week over the course of their senior year. As with other Yale societies, the sharing of a personal history is the keystone of the senior year together in the tomb. Reputedly, members are assigned a nickname; it is understood but unsubstantiated that each member "carries on a line" in the society, and that each line is assigned a name. For Bones, it is said that these names are associated with Roman mythology (or just almost-typical high school male nicknames), while at Scroll and Key the names are associated with Greek mythology, and with Egyptian mythology at Wolf's Head.

According to "dissident" Bones members interviewed by Alexandra Robbins for her book Secrets of The Tomb [p. 5], members dine off a set of Hitler's silverware while in the tomb, consuming expensive gourmet meals with each other over the span of the year. The members call themselves "Knights," and simultaneously call everyone else in the world at large "Barbarians." Another dissociation is that clocks in the Bones "tomb" run intentionally five minutes ahead of the rest of the world (though this is a common practice in the homes of many members of the American military), to give the members an ongoing sense that the Bonesmen's space is a totally separate world — and a world just a bit ahead of the curve of the rest of the "Barbarians".

There are also reports that the society has ideals of racial purity and accumulation of power by any means. ^[2]

Architecture

Main building, attribution in dispute. Possibly Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892) or Henry Austin (1804-1891). (1856-first wing; 1903-second wing; 1911-addition of relocated Davis-designed Neo-Gothic towers at rear garden. Front and side facades brownstone Egypto-Doric style.)

Evarts Tracy and Edgerton Swartwout, Tracy and Swartwout, New York. (1912, Bones' adjacent "secret garden" described as an "Oxfordesque Cloister".)[[3]]

Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of the dispute over the identity of the architect in his 1999 history of Yale's campus. Pinnell relates how first the left-side block (1856), then forty-seven years later the right-side block, and ultimately the gothic towers salvaged from A.J. Davis' 1851-53 Alumni Hall were added at the time of the creation of their cloister. The salvage is also mentioned at [4].

Pinnell speculates whether the re-use of the Davis towers was evidence of an architectural "filial piety" suggesting that Davis did the original building; conversely, Austin was responsible for the atmospherically similar brownstone Egyptian Revival gates, built 1845, of the Grove Street Cemetery, on the opposite side of campus. Also discussed by Pinnell is the tomb's aesthetic role in relation to its neighbors, including the Yale Art Gallery. (p.42, "Yale University" 1999 Princeton Architectural Press ISBN 1568981678 [[5]].) Additional data at [6]

Bonesmen

File:Skull and Crossbones c1947, GHW Bush left of clock.jpg

Skull and Bones 1947, with George H.W. Bush just left of clock

The leading families in Skull and Bones have been known because in 1985 an anonymous source leaked rosters to a private researcher, Antony C. Sutton, who wrote a book on the group titled America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. This leaked 1985 data was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book Fleshing out Skull and Bones, a compilation edited by Kris Millegan, published in 2003.

Many influential figures have been in Bones and influential families have often had multiple members over successive generations, much like other societies at Yale. Bonesmen include U.S. Presidents such as George H. W. Bush and William Howard Taft, Supreme Court Justices, and U.S. business leaders.

Both 2004 Presidential Nominees - Democratic Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Republican President George W. Bush - were members of Skull and Bones. The nominees were interviewed separately by Meet the Press's Tim Russert. When asked about the organization, both declined to give any details. ^[3]

Trivia

Claims are made for chapters and "groves" in Germanic areas of Europe for other "death cults", but this does not seem to be realistic, since German fraternities (Studentenverbindungen) with comparable influence like Askania-Burgundia are organized in a quite different way.
Skull and Bones inspired the secret society in the 2000 film The Skulls.[7]
A letter, sent by member Winter Mead to member F. Trubee Davison in 1918, said Geronimo's skull and other remains were taken from the leader's burial site and deposited at the Skull and Bones headquarters.[8]
The fictional character Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons is a Bonesman from the class of 1914.[9]
Montgomery Burns in a later episode believes that Bart Simpson's dog Laddie was in Skull & Bones.[10]
Logan Huntzberger, a fictional character from the TV series Gilmore Girls, is a member of the Life and Death Brigade, a fictional secret society at Yale, which is a parody of Skull and Bones.[11]
Skull and Bones ceremonies and meetings are depicted in the 2006 movie The Good Shepherd and include a hazing - with the new initiates engaging in mud wrestling, being urinated on by upper classmen, and having to reveal secrets they've never told anyone else ever before. The movie also shows social gatherings of bonesmen at Deer Island. Deer Island is the holiday island of the society.
CSI: NY episode "Some Buried Bones" which first aired on Feb 7, 2007 on CBS refers to a secret society of students from powerful and rich families, Kings and Shadows, based at a Queens college. This fictional society, in which the members wear black capes and white masks, is undoubtedly based loosely on Skull and Bones. This connection is also implied by the episode's title.[12]

References

^ " America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones" Sutton, Antony C., 2003.
^ " Urge to Join," Secret American Establishment, 1985.[1]
^ Meet the Press[2]

External links

*

[1] " America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones" Sutton, Antony C., 2003.

[2] " Urge to Join," Secret American Establishment, 1985.[1]

[3] Meet the Press[2]

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