Across the country, there are dozens of these secret and not-so-secret groups still thriving.
Joseph Nedick knows the crowd gathering in Rutgers University's Kirkpatrick Chapel might be wondering if they've landed on the set of some weird movie.
Students carrying dark robes are filing into a hushed church with blood-red walls. An aging book filled with signatures is opened on a table near the pews.
The hatted skull that presides over Rutgers University's Cap and Skull society.Alexandra Pais
A skull -- a real human skull -- is placed at the altar to overlook the proceedings.
Standing at the podium, Nedick tries to break the tension.
"Let me reassure the parents here today that your son or daughter did not join a cult," he says, amid laughter.
The gathering, held last spring on the New Brunswick campus, was the induction ceremony for Cap and Skull, Rutgers' once-secret student society.
In the past, the group's "tapping" ceremony -- during which students were tapped on the shoulder and told they'd been selected to join the secret society -- would have been shrouded in mystery. These days, the Cap and Skull society has come out of the
shadows.
Founded 115 years ago, Cap and Skull now functions as an honor society for an elite group of Rutgers undergraduates. The newest inductees, 18 juniors selected from the tens of thousands of third-year students enrolled at the 65,000-student university, were asked to join based on leadership, character and service to the university.
As Cap and Skull members, the students will be part of a club that includes generations of business leaders, college presidents, scientists and other successful Rutgers graduates. Actor Paul Robeson, U.S. Sen. Clifford Case, early TV star Ozzie Nelson,
former state Attorney General Anne Milgram and "Apprentice" winner Randal Pinkett are all members.
Across the country, there are dozens of secret and not-so-secret societies still thriving on college campuses. The most famous remains the mysterious Skull and Bones society at Yale University, where George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and John Kerry are among the members.
The societies, with their often bizarre rites and rituals, have spawned conspiracy theories and rumors that their members are showered with riches when they are tapped and secretly come together to rule the world.
At the Cap and Skull initiation ceremony at Rutgers in April, the new initiates were told to not get their hopes up.
"Membership in Cap and Skull doesn't make you rich or powerful," said Nedick, president and chairman of the group's executive committee. "There is no Ferrari or Lamborghini waiting for you in the parking lot for the Class of 2016. Nor are you about to be borne into some nefarious, elite class of people bent on domination or special privilege."
Alison Rodriguez, a member of Cap and Skull's Class of 2005, later took the podium and jokingly fueled the rumors. "Joe was kidding, Lamborghinis for everyone!" Rodriguez said.
The origins of U.S. college secret societies date back to the 1700s. Early groups, including the Flat Hat Club and Phi Beta Kappa at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, used secrecy oaths, mottos, initiation rituals and secret handshakes to instill loyalty among their members. Strict secrecy also helped avoid drawing attention from disapproving college administrations or the suspicious Colonial government.
Some of the groups, including Phi Beta Kappa, eventually dropped the secrecy and became public honor societies. Others grew into Greek-lettered social fraternities. A few remained secret -- or semi-secret.
Those still operating on American campuses include Skull and Serpent at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Seven Society at the University of Virginia, Order of Gimghoul at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cadaver Society at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, Quill and Dagger at Cornell University in New York, ANAK Society at Georgia Tech and dozens more.
Yale's Order of the Skull and Bones, founded in 1832, remains the best-known college secret society. It has a crypt-like building, known as "The Tomb," in New Haven, Conn., and a riverside retreat, Deer Island, in upstate New York.
Its members, known as Bonesmen, include generations of Supreme Court justices, politicians, federal government officials and business leaders. There is a long list of conspiracy theories attached to the group, including that Skull and Bones is a branch of the Illuminati, created the nuclear bomb, controls the CIA, planned the Kennedy assassination and dug up and stole the skull of the Native American warrior Geronimo from his grave.
Skull and Bones, like most of the collegiate secret societies, was once restricted to white males. Over the years, most groups have succumbed to pressure to admit minorities and women.
In an era when the Internet and social media make it nearly impossible to keep a secret on a college campus, secret societies still carry a mystique.
"It's human nature to be curious about secret societies -- and to want to attribute conspiracy theories to them," says Alexandra Robbins, author of "Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power" (Hachette Book Group, 2002).
Robbins, a member of Yale's Scroll and Key secret society, spoke to more than 100 Skull and Bones members while researching her book. She says secret societies aren't going anywhere.
The logo of Yale University's mysterious Skull and Bones society.
"College secret societies continue to exist both because of powerful alumni networks and because students are lured by the exclusivity, rumors of perks and the apparent promise of networks that can help them after graduation," Robbins says.
Not all secret societies have noble reputations, however. Princeton University's semi-secret 21 Club made headlines last year when its members allegedly trashed the Tiger Inn, a campus eating club, during a party, according to the Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper.
The 21 Club, which dates back to 1881, is reportedly made up of 21 juniors and 21 seniors. The club allegedly requires new members to drink 21 beers in 42 minutes during its initiation ceremony, a fact that, though it can't be confirmed, has become a
part of the club's lore.
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, a 1952 Princeton graduate, is among the few who have publicly admitted to being a 21 Club member. He writes in his 2006 memoir that he was a member of "Princeton's Right Wing Club -- so named because we spent much of our time using our right arms to hoist spirituous beverages -- and the 21 Club, another social organization with a similar mission."
At Rutgers, the earliest secret societies can be traced back to the 1840s when the first fraternities, including Delta Phi, arrived on campus. Cap and Skull was founded on the New Brunswick campus in 1900 by a group of class leaders and friends who had
also attended Rutgers Prep, then a private boarding school affiliated with the college.
The logo of Seven Society at the University of Virginia.
"As graduation approached, we began to feel that some organized bond should be formed to perpetuate this close association after college days had passed," DeWitt Rapalje, one of the founders, said in 1950 at a dinner marking Cap and Skull's anniversary.
The society "tapped" student leaders, sports team captains, campus newspaper editors and other student leaders to join. In the 1920s and 1930s, the entire junior class lined up outside Rutgers' Old Queens building to wait for a tap on the shoulder to indicate if they were selected. Later, the tapping process moved to the campus gym.
The group used a human skull -- probably taken from a campus anatomy lab, members speculated -- as its symbol. It represented "the death of petty rivalries" and other impediments to serving each other and Rutgers.
By the 1960s, Rutgers students began to turn on Cap and Skull and other "elitist" student groups. Students protested using campus funds for the group. The last Cap and Skull class to graduate as a secret society was in 1969.
"Cap and Skull was kind of voted out of existence. So, it closed its doors," says William Brahms, a Cap and Skull member who wrote a history of the group and its members for its 100th anniversary in 2000.
In the 1980s, Rutgers students began discussing starting a university honor society.
Rutgers dean of students Howard Crosby, who was a Cap and Skull member as an undergraduate, suggested reviving the secret society, Brahms says. But this time around, Cap and Skull would no longer be secret and would expand its class to 18 students -- including women. Students could apply to be elected to Cap and Skull by filling out an application, removing much of the mystery.
The logo of the Skull and Serpent at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.Joe Mabel
The new Cap and Skull revived many of the old traditions, including electing a "High Skull" to lead the group. By the 1990s, the new Skulls were making their presence known on campus. During the 1996 homecoming football game, they posted "Cap and Skull is watching you" on the stadium scoreboard. On Halloween that same year, they drew attention for marching across campus by candlelight in black robes and white caps, carrying the skull, before chanting the society's "History, Spirit, Tradition" motto at Brower Commons, the main dining hall on Rutgers' College Avenue campus.
"I remember going into someone's dorm room and seeing his Cap and Skull certificate. I said, 'What's that?' " says Brahms, who would eventually be elected "High Skull" for the Class of 1989.
The real benefit of being a member of Cap and Skull is the connections that members make with other successful people, says Brahms, who is now chief librarian for the Camden County Library System. He used his connections in Cap and Skull to get
advice about law school. The wife of a fellow Skull eventually recommended he go to graduate school to study library science.
Other Skulls also say they got a boost in their careers or personal lives based on people they met through their membership.
"I don't think Cap and Skull put people in those positions. Cap and Skull recognizes people who want to succeed," Brahms says. "We're not some secret society that is doing weird or strange things. A lot of that is propelled by other secret societies. They kind of revel in it. ... We're not trying to create an aura of mystique."
But the Cap and Skull members continue the group's quirky traditions, including the death imagery.
Ed Potosnak, a 1996 Rutgers graduate, remembers his family unexpectedly showing up at his Cap and Skull tapping ceremony in Rutgers' scarlet-walled chapel. His grandmother wasn't sure what to make of the ceremony. "She said, 'That is a spooky church. ... It's red.' She never mentioned the skull," says Potosnak, executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.
Cap and Skull members are currently raising money to restore the observatory next to the chapel on Rutgers' Old Queens campus to create a permanent home for the group. Many Skulls say they considered their membership in the society their greatest
accomplishment at the university.
"It was, to me, the highlight of my career at Rutgers," says Rodriguez, a 2005 graduate and founder of a luxury skin-care company.
At April's tapping ceremony, Cap and Skull members, dressed in red dresses and dark suits with red ties, returned to campus to welcome the 18 new Skulls. Members read the history of the organization and the names of the new initiates. Each walked to the
front of the church to don their black robes and goofy caps in a ceremony punctuated by giggles.
The juniors elected this year are a multi-ethnic collection of athletes, student government leaders, sorority members and academic stars with long, impressive resumes. They ended the ceremony by marching out of the chapel as elder Cap and Skull members sang Rutgers' alma mater. They gathered on the lawn in front of the Old Queens administration building to celebrate, walking on the same ground where the first Cap and Skull members gathered 115 years ago.
"Once you're a member, you're a member for life," says Vetri Velan, the Class of 2015 High Skull.
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