Questions & Answers

College Secret Societies: A Comprehensive List

American and British universities have produced a remarkable range of secret societies, debating clubs, and quasi-fraternal orders over the past two and a half centuries. This page provides a comprehensive, institution-by-institution list of the major college secret societies at Yale, Harvard, William and Mary, Princeton, the University of Virginia, MIT, and other American campuses, and a parallel list of the comparable Oxford, Cambridge, and French grande école orders. For a broader account of the tradition, see the college secret societies entry; for an account of Skull and Bones and the Yale senior societies, see the dedicated cluster; and for a more general treatment of the fraternal pattern, see the fraternal orders and lodges pillar.

The College of William and Mary

The College of William and Mary, founded in 1693 in Williamsburg, Virginia, is the original home of the American Greek-letter society. The principal William and Mary orders are:

  • Flat Hat Club (1750). The first college society in America, founded by students of William and Mary.
  • Phi Beta Kappa (1776). Founded on December 5, 1776, by John Heath and four other students at the Raleigh Tavern. Phi Beta Kappa is conventionally treated as the first American Greek-letter society, and its golden key became a model for the academic honor society. The original society was a secret debating body; the modern Phi Beta Kappa is a public academic honor society.
  • The Seven Society. A small, anonymous benefactor society at William and Mary, best known for its anonymous donations to the college.

Yale University

The Yale campus is the center of the secret-society tradition. The principal Yale orders are:

  • Skull and Bones (1832). Founded at Yale in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft. The oldest continuously operating senior society at Yale, Skull and Bones meets in a building known as the Tomb on the High Street in New Haven. The order’s symbol is a skull and crossed bones, and the number 322 figures prominently. The Skull and Bones entry provides a full account, and the Skull and Bones membership list is examined separately.
  • Scroll and Key (1842). Founded in 1842, the principal rival of Skull and Bones. The society’s symbol is the “key.”
  • Wolf’s Head (1883). Founded in 1883, the third of the major Yale senior societies.
  • Book and Snake (1863). Founded in 1863, an engineering-focused senior society associated with the former Sheffield Scientific School.
  • Berzelius (1848). A science-focused Yale society founded in 1848. No longer operates in its original form.
  • The Illustrious Order of the Skull. A small “meta-society” composed of senior society members from the major Yale senior orders.

Harvard University

The Harvard tradition differs from the Yale tradition in important ways. Harvard’s social elite has historically been organized around a set of “final clubs” rather than a set of senior societies. The major Harvard final clubs are:

  • Porcellian Club (1791). The oldest of the Harvard final clubs, and conventionally the most prestigious.
  • A.D. Club. Founded in the nineteenth century, the A.D. is one of the “Big Three” of Harvard final clubs, with the Porcellian and the Fly.
  • Fly Club. The third of the “Big Three,” founded in the late nineteenth century.
  • Spee Club. Founded in 1852, one of the more established of the Harvard final clubs.
  • Delphic Club. A smaller final club, founded in 1886.
  • Hasty Pudding Club (1795). A theatrical and social club, less exclusive than the other final clubs, but historically one of the most visible Harvard student bodies.
  • Fox Club, Owl Club, Phoenix Club. Smaller final clubs, each with their own distinct character.

The Harvard final clubs have been criticized at various points in their history for exclusivity, and several have been opened to women since the 1970s. The Massachusetts Club of Washington, the Somerset Club of Boston, and the Harvard Club of New York perform a parallel networking function for Harvard alumni in major American cities.

Princeton University

The Princeton social order is organized around a network of “eating clubs” that serve as residential and social institutions. The most prestigious of the senior clubs are:

  • Cottage Club. Founded in 1886, one of the senior “signing” clubs that admits undergraduates in their senior year.
  • Tiger Inn. Founded in 1890, another of the senior clubs.
  • Cap and Gown. Founded in 1890, a senior club with a strong tradition of athletic involvement.
  • Whig-Cliosophic (1765). A debating and political society, the oldest Princeton society of the eighteenth century.
  • American Whig Society (1765). The Whigs’ historical rival.
  • The Ivy Club. Founded in 1879, the most exclusive of the senior eating clubs.

The University of Virginia

The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, has a distinctive tradition of senior secret societies:

  • The Seven Society (1903). The most prominent of the UVA senior orders, best known for its anonymous donations to the university and for the small “Seven” symbols it leaves around the Grounds.
  • IMP Society (1902). A performance-oriented senior society, known for its practical jokes and its theatrical skits.
  • Z Society (1892). A senior honor society, founded in 1892 and revived in the modern period.

MIT and the Engineering Schools

The MIT campus has produced a range of secret and semi-secret bodies:

  • Order of the Engineer (1925). An engineering honor society, best known for the stainless-steel ring worn by its members. The “Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer,” written by Rudyard Kipling for the 1925 dedication of the Seven Wonders Bridge in Quebec, has been performed at the initiation of engineers across North America.
  • The HKN, the TBP, and other engineering honor societies. The Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) honor society of electrical engineers, the Tau Beta Pi (TBP) honor society of engineers, and discipline-specific honor societies.

The University of Oxford

The Oxford tradition is organized around a network of social clubs and dining societies. The major Oxford orders are:

  • Bullingdon Club. An Oxford dining society, founded in 1780, with a famous reputation for destructive high-spirits. The Bullingdon has had a remarkable influence on British political life: David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and a long list of Conservative politicians have been members. The Bullingdon is currently suspended.
  • Piers Gaveston Society. A parallel social club at Oxford, named after Edward II’s favorite.

The University of Cambridge

The Cambridge tradition includes:

  • The Apostles (1820). A small intellectual secret society that has counted a remarkable fraction of British intellectual life among its members, including Roger Fry, Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes, and E. M. Forster.
  • The Pitt Club. A social club, founded in 1835.
  • The Footlights. A Cambridge comedy club, less secret than the Apostles.

The French Grandes Écoles

The French grandes écoles have their own internal traditions of student societies. The BDE (Bureau Des Élèves) is the student union of each grande école, which organizes social and political life. The ENS, Polytechnique, and Mines have their older student orders, including the various “Kès” of the ENS and Polytechnique. The French student secret societies are less well documented than the Anglo-American ones, but they have been a significant feature of French elite formation since the nineteenth century.

The Pattern

The college secret society is a global phenomenon, with major expressions in the American, British, and French university systems. The major orders share a common pattern: a founding moment, a ritual of initiation, a body of symbols and signs, an established meeting place, and a body of alumni members. The major orders have produced an outsized fraction of the political, financial, and cultural elites of their respective countries. The pattern of secret societies and government and the fraternal orders and lodges pillar are examined elsewhere.

Sources and Further Reading

The standard scholarly treatments are Alexandra Robbins, Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Rites of the Elite (2002), and Marc Wortman, The Secret Society: Yale and the Hush, Hush, History of Skull and Bones (2004), both of which put the American college society tradition in context. For the institutional histories of the major universities, the relevant primary sources are Yale: A History (Brooks Mather Kelley, 2005), Harvard: A History (John T. Bethell, 1998), and Princeton: A History (Mark F. Bernstein, 2006). For the British tradition, the relevant modern source is Keith Thomas, “The University and the Social Order” in The Victorian Revolution (1973). For the French grandes écoles, the standard source is Marc Bloch, L’Étrange Défaite (1946, partial translation 1999), and the modern treatment in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales (2003).

The college secret societies cluster, Skull and Bones, fraternal orders and lodges, history of secret societies, and secret societies and government cover the surrounding context.