There are many collegiate secret societies in North America. They vary greatly in their level of secrecy and the degree of independence from their universities. A collegiate secret society makes a significant effort to keep affairs, membership rolls, signs of recognition, initiation, or other aspects secret from the public.
Some collegiate secret societies are called "class societies", which restrict membership to one class year. Most class societies are restricted or limited to senior class members and are therefore called senior societies on many campuses. Some include junior class members, hence, upperclass students.
Categorization There is no strict rule on the categorization of secret societies, although a secret membership role is key. Secret societies can have ceremonial initiations, secret signs of recognition (gestures, handshakes, passwords), formal secrets (the 'true' name of the society, a motto, or society history). Traditional college fraternities or sororities, literary societies, honorary groups, and pre-professional fraternal can have similarly secret rituals but do not keep their membership secret. Some secret societies have kept their membership secret until graduation; others never reveal membership until death. Some, like Skull and Bones at Yale, have published their membership lists in the yearbooks and the Yale Daily News.
One key concept in distinguishing secret societies from traditional fraternities and sororities is that, on campuses that have both kinds of organizations, one can be a member of both. That is, membership is not mutually exclusive. Usually, being a member of more than one traditional fraternity or sorority is not considered appropriate because that member would have divided loyalties. However, typically, there is no issue with being a member of a secret society and a fraternity, because they are not considered similar organizations or competing organizations.
Many secret societies exist as honoraries on one campus and may have been actual meeting societies at one time, kept alive by one or two dedicated local alumni or an alumni affairs or dean's office person who sees to it that an annual initiation is held every year. Some of these state that they are honoraries; others seek to perpetuate the image of a continuing active society where there is none.
Common traits There are several common traits among these societies. Historically, most collegiate secret societies were open only to white males, although this began to change in the late 20th century with a greater emphasis being placed on diversity. Many societies also limit their membership to a specific small number and recruit members at the end of their junior year. Most societies maintain secrecy, even at the alumni level, regarding membership, rituals, and traditions. Extensive mortuary imagery is associated with many secret societies, maintaining a pretense of great seriousness. Their clubhouses are often called "tombs", based on a tradition started at Yale University.
Transitions Some historically secret societies are now considered honor societies or senior societies. Phi Beta Kappa is the best-known example, where it originally operated on a secret chapter basis, and sometime after its secrets were made public in the 1830s, Phi Beta Kappa continued as an honor society. The membership of honor societies or senior societies is not secret, but their rituals may be.
History The first collegiate secret society recorded in North America is that of the F.H.C. Society, established on November 11, 1750, at The College of William & Mary. Though the letters stand for a Latin phrase, the society is informally and publicly referred to as the "Flat Hat Club"; its most prominent members included St. George Tucker, Thomas Jefferson, and George Wythe. The second-oldest Latin-letter society, the P.D.A. Society ("Please Don't Ask"), in 1776 refused entry to John Heath, then a student at the college; rebuffed, he in the same year established the first Greek-letter secret society at the college, the Phi Beta Kappa, modeling it on the two older fraternities (see the Flat Hat Club). The Phi Beta Kappa society had a rudimentary initiation and maintained an uncertain level of secrecy. Those secrets were exposed in the mid-1830s by students at Harvard University acting under the patronage of John Quincy Adams. Since the 1840s, Phi Beta Kappa has operated openly as an academic honor society.
The spread of Phi Beta Kappa to different colleges and universities likely sparked the creation of such competing societies as Chi Phi (1824), Kappa Alpha Society (1825), and Sigma Phi Society (1827); many continue today as American collegiate social fraternities (and, later, sororities). A second line of development took place at Yale College, with the creation of Chi Delta Theta (1821) and Skull and Bones (1832): antecedents of what would become known as class societies.
Skull & Bones aroused competition on campus, bringing forth Scroll and Key (1841), and later Wolf's Head (1883), among students in the senior class. But the prestige of the senior societies was able to keep the very influential fraternities Alpha Delta Phi and Psi Upsilon from ever becoming full four-year institutions at Yale. They remained junior class societies there. There were sophomore and freshman societies at Yale as well. A stable system of eight class societies (two competing chains of four class societies each) was in place by the late 1840s.
Delta Kappa Epsilon is a junior class society founded at Yale in 1844. None of the 51 chapters the parent chapter spawned operates as a junior society, but the collegiate fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon did come from the class society system. Likewise, Alpha Sigma Phi started as a Yale sophomore society and now has 68 chapters; although, again, none of Alpha Sigma Phi's chapters have remained sophomore societies.
The development of class societies spread from Yale to other campuses in the northeastern States. Seniors at neighboring Wesleyan established a senior society, Skull & Serpent (1865), and a second society, originally a chapter of Skull and Bones, but then independent as a sophomore society, Theta Nu Epsilon (1870), which began to drastically increase the number of campuses with class societies. William Raimond Baird noted in the 1905 edition of his Manual that "In addition to the regular fraternities, there are Eastern college societies which draw members from only one of the undergraduate classes, and which have only a few features of the general fraternity system." From Wesleyan, the practice spread more widely across the Northeast, with full systems soon in place at Brown, Rutgers, and other institutions.
Kappa Sigma Theta, Phi Theta Psi, Delta Beta Xi, Delta Sigma Phi, were all sophomore societies at Yale, and the two large freshman societies of Delta Kappa and Kappa Sigma Epsilon lived until 1880.. Delta Kappa established chapters at Amherst College, the University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, University of Mississippi, Dartmouth College, and Centre College. Kappa Sigma Epsilon had chapters at Amherst, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Dartmouth. Other class societies existed at Brown, Harvard, Syracuse, Colgate, Cornell, and other Northeastern institutions. At universities such as Colgate University, these secret societies have evolved and morphed over the years.
Theta Nu Epsilon spread to about 120 colleges and universities, but many of its chapters operated as three-year societies where a class-year society was inappropriate.
The proliferation of senior societies across the United States between 1900 and 1930 is attributed to the historical precedent established by such organizations and the influence of Skull & Bones, one of the most prominent class societies of the era. Class societies at the junior, sophomore, and freshman levels are similarly present at numerous campuses throughout the country.
Individual institutions Clemson University Tiger Brotherhood is an honorary service fraternity at Clemson University. It was established in 1924 as a non-secretive student group but soon went defunct. It was reformed in 1928 and encourages standards of social and ethical conduct and a commitment to Clemson. Although most of its members are unknown, former members include two Clemson president—E. Walter Sikes and James Frazier Barker—and Clemson football coach Frank Howard. The university suspended the fraternity for three years in 2017 for hazing.
Colgate University
Although there have been many underground organizations at Colgate University, the first secret honor society on record is the Skull and Scroll Society, founded in 1908. Members of the Skull and Scroll wore white hats with a black skull and scroll added to them. The Gorgon's Head was founded in 1912 and chose people for traits such as character, distinguished service, and achievement. Its members wore black hats with a golden emblem. These two organizations competed with each other until 1934 when they merged to create the Konosioni senior honor society, now called Tredecim Senior Honor Society. Tredecim is no longer a secret society but is now seen as a leadership society.
College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia was home to the first known secret collegiate society in the United States, the F.H.C. Society (founded in 1750). The initials of the society stand for a Latin phrase, likely or (two renderings of "brotherhood, humaneness, and knowledge"), but is publicly nicknamed the Flat Hat Club. William & Mary alumnus and third American president, Thomas Jefferson, was perhaps the most famous member of the F.H.C. Society. The best opinion is that the society did not survive the British invasion of Virginia at the end of the American Revolution. Going dormant during the American Revolution, the society was revived in 1916 as the Flat Hat Club.
William & Mary students John Heath and William Short founded the nation's first collegiate Greek-letter organization, Phi Beta Kappa, on December 5, 1776, as a secret literary and philosophical society. Additional chapters were established in 1780 and 1781 at Yale and Harvard. With nearly 300 chapters across the country and no longer secret, Phi Beta Kappa has grown to become the nation's premier academic honor society.
Although the pressures of the American Civil War forced several societies to disappear, many were revived during the 20th century. Some of the secret societies known to currently exist at the college are: The 7 Society, 13 Club, Alpha Club, Bishop James Madison Society, The Cord, Flat Hat Club, The Spades, W Society, and Wren Society.
Columbia University Three secret societies were formed at Columbia University: St. Anthony Hall (1847) and the Nacoms (1898) and Sachems (1915). St. Anthony Hall is now a traditional fraternal organization and literary society that has ten other chapters, notably at Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. The Nacoms and Sachems are senior societies of fifteen members each. Though efforts have been made by the university's student body to force them to abolish their secrecy and register with the administration, efforts have been unsuccessful.
Cornell University Cornell University has a long history of secret societies on campus. Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University and himself a Bonesman, is said to have encouraged the formation of a "secret society" on campus. In the early years, all fraternities were called the "secret societies", but as the Greek system developed into a larger, more public entity, "secret society" began to refer only to the class societies, except for the Sigma Phi Society on campus.