Skull & Bones

Above the broken, fitful cheers, suddenly came a last swelling roar.

"Bones." "Last man." . . . It was Le Baron. He came like a black tornado. . . . Straight to the two he came, never deviating, straight past Dink Stover, and, suddenly switching around, almost knocked him to the ground with the crash of his blow.

"Go to your room!" Some, one caught Stover. . . . About him pandemonium broke loose. . . .

Generations of schoolboys have held their breath at Owen Johnson's description of Yale's Tap Day in Stover at Yale (1911). In the eyes of a few incurable schoolboys, being tapped for Skull & Bones still ranks second only to being President of the U. S. Founded in 1832 by a group of disgruntled Phi Beta Kappa-rejects, Bones is the oldest and most sacred of Yale's six senior secret societies (Skull & Bones, Scroll & Key, Wolf's Head, Elihu Club, Book & Snake, Berzelius).

Every year, the second Thursday afternoon in May, about 200 hopeful juniors gather on the grass in Branford College court (until 1933 they stood by the Fence in front of Durfee on the old campus). At the stroke of 5, senior members of the societies, wearing their pins, black ties and blue suits, march through the crowd, tap their men. A tappee hustles (see cut) to his room, followed closely by his tapper, or shakes his head (refusal). Each society picks 15. Tapping usually ends when the Battell Chapel clock strikes 6, but in 1936 Wolf's Head, turned down by 17 tappees, went on tapping long after dark to fill its quota.

The senior societies take their men almost exclusively from the ranks of junior fraternities. Each society has a distinct character: e.g., Keys (Scroll & Key) usually picks rich, convivial boys. Bones chooses campus big shots, almost invariably taps the football captain-elect, chairman of the News, chairman of the Lit. head of Dwight Hall (campus Y. M. C. A.), leader of the Glee Club, a self-supporting student. Quip-sters say that Bones always taps 13 big men, one unknown and one Armenian.

One U. S. President (Taft) was a Bones man. Among living Bones men are Presidential Candidate Robert A. Taft, Republican Leader Kenneth Simpson, Banker Percy Rockefeller, onetime Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot. onetime Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, Author Donald Ogden Stewart, Radio Singer Lanny Ross, Yale's President Charles Seymour. Not strictly accurate is the legend that a Bones man is never without a job, but a Bones man on his uppers often gets handouts from fellow Bones men or the society. Skull & Bones (corporate name: Russell Trust Association) is sometimes alleged to be Connecticut's second richest corporation (first: Yale).

After Tap Day a Bones man takes the veil, spends most of his time with fellow Bones men. Twice each week (Thursday and Saturday or Sunday evenings) they meet for a hearty dinner and secret ritual in a bronze-doored, brownstone, windowless "tomb" in a dark corner of the campus.

The ritual is said to include wrestling matches (from which they often emerge in tatters) and critical bull sessions in which members tell each other their faults, prod each other to strive for Success. Main room in the tomb is reputed to have a marble altar and an illuminated skull.

Legend says that on at least two occasions outsiders got in: once when firemen were admitted to put out a fire--after first being initiated into the society; another time when a Keys man, pretending to have lost his Bones key, got a campus policeman to unlock the door.

Around midnight. Bones men disperse quietly to their rooms, may not utter a word, even to their roommates, until next morning. Best-known tradition is that a Bones man must leave the room when an outsider mentions his society's name. Favorite gag in Harvard Hasty Pudding shows: someone says "Skull & Bones" and a tramp jumps up, stalks out.

Bones men are supposed to wear their pins at all times, hold them in their mouths while taking a shower. They are reputed to give each other philosophers' names as nicknames. When a Bones man marries, the 14 other Bones men in his class are ushers at his wedding. After the normal ceremony, they retire with the bride and groom into another room, there conduct a special Bones ceremony. They invariably give the bride a grandfather clock.

Dink Stover protested (before he was tapped) that Tap Day was "ridiculous rigmarole." Twenty years later Richard Storrs Childs, '32 (now publisher of Modern Age Books), also denounced "the Elks in our midst," shortly afterward accepted election to Keys. In 1933 the entire junior class revolted, stayed stubbornly in their rooms on Tap Day. The societies pursued them to their rooms, had no trouble filling their quotas. Next year, Tap Day returned to the campus. This year the Political Union held an unprecedented public debate, resolved (3840-17) that "the influence of the senior societies is not to the best interests of Yale."

Nevertheless when Tap Day dawned last week, a Dink Stoverish excitement seized Yale's campus. In the News, Chairman Kingman Brewster Jr. scolded: "Just as in the case of the more discreet years, the society question has managed to dislocate life around here to an insane degree. . . . Six o'clock will bring a general sigh of relief and a sudden realization that after all the day of judgment is still a matter for the Gods and not 90 Yale men."

Six o'clock brought a few surprises. No fewer than nine men turned down Bones (including Kingman Brewster, whom a Bones man found in the News office, and Football Captain-elect Harold Whiteman, who went Keys). Of those who accepted Bones, four were ringleaders in the Political Union. Last man tapped (highest honor) was Junior Prom Chairman Laurence Gotzian Tighe Jr., a functionary usually nabbed by Keys.

Otherwise, Tap Day ran true to form. Absent from Branford Court but eventually bagged by Bones in his room was another critic of the societies, Kingman Brewster's roommate, William Eldred Jackson, son of U. S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson. Bones also got its Armenian, Newsman Barooyr Zorthian.

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