[CTRL] What's really wrong with Skull and Bones.
-Caveat Lector- http://www.thenewrepublic.com/041700/foer041700.html What's really wrong with Skull and Bones. Tomb of Their Own By FRANKLIN FOER Issue date: 04.17.00 Post date: 04.06.00 "A secret society so powerful it can give you anything you desire ... at a price." --trailer for The Skulls The skulls is a movie about George W. Bush's wild youth. Of course, it's not billed that way. No Hollywood studio would explicitly make a picture about a current presidential contender. But the subject of The Skulls is clear enough: the corrupting influence of a secret society, blatantly modeled after Yale's notorious Skull and Bones, of which Bush was once a devoted member. The depiction of Skull and Bones in the film--just the latest addition to a minor industry of Bonesiana--pretty much captures the prevailing media view of the institution: an aristocratic, all-powerful cabal. Membership, at least according to the movie, entitles the Bonesman to $20,000, a sports car, and a harem of gorgeous women. The Skulls control the university and the local cops. The society's alumni--senators and judges--sit around sipping champagne, chitchatting about hunting, and conspiring to suppress their enemies. Throughout the film, the Skulls' critics fall back on the same mantra: "If it's secret and it's elite, it can't be good." That's half right. Actually, the problem with the Skull and Bones of today may be that it's not forthrightly elitist enough. Skull and Bones, along with Yale's other secret societies, isn't the fusty, preppy, creepy conspiracy it once was. These societies ditched most of the nude wrestling, weird rituals, and boarding-school elitism long ago. In fact, they've spent the past decade running hard in the other direction. To put it crudely, Yale's secret societies--once ground zero of the Eastern establishment--are now high temples of political correctness, the ultimate in Ivy League identity politics. This year's class of Bonespeople has more women than men and as many African Americans as WASPS. Conservatives are scarce. Skull and Bones has democratized--but not in a very productive way. Back when the societies were proudly, offensively elitist, they had a purpose and a paternalistic sense of duty. Bones bragged that it would shape the characters of those who would shape the world. Today, the students in Skull and Bones find that kind of noblesse oblige deeply embarrassing. And, in their efforts to inoculate themselves against charges of elitism, the new elites have directed their energy to less grandiose concerns: namely, themselves. Skull and Bones, once a group for public-minded elites, has become the exact opposite--group therapy. Skull and Bones' roots can be traced to 1826, when a New York bricklayer named William Morgan disappeared just as he was preparing to publish a book that would unveil the secrets of his Masonic lodge. The Morgan case grabbed headlines and sparked a national backlash against all secret societies. In a populist whirl, Harvard and Yale Universities forced their most prominent secret society, Phi Beta Kappa, to ditch its secrecy. The Yale men, angry at having their mystery stripped away, rebelled and created Skull and Bones in 1832. Again, the faculty campaigned to stamp out the clandestine club, but this merely increased its cachet. By the 1850s, when it built its spooky, windowless sepulchre on High Street, Bones had become an exclusive hangout for Yale's top students. They'd get together to perform goofy gothic rituals with coffins, robes, and mud, but mainly they would talk about trendy literature that wasn't covered in Yale's classrooms. Eventually, the guys who couldn't win spots in Bones went off and started their own secret societies. Harvard students also responded to the demise of Phi Beta Kappa by establishing their own exclusive havens: the finals clubs. But these were never more than a Gold Coast, a place for the richest students to socialize with one another and turn up their noses at the rest of the student body. Skull and Bones, on the other hand, steered a more high-minded course. Even when it admitted only men from Groton and Hotchkiss and some of its members touted eugenics, Bones bragged of being a meritocracy. If you excelled in extracurricular activities--as editor of the Yale Daily News or captain of the football team, for example--Skull and Bones tapped you. It's an ethos celebrated in the 1911 novel Stover at Yale, which explains that election to Bones "stands as a reward for merit here." Men spent their college careers positioning themselves for a tap. Rejection was crushing. Or, as Sinclair Lewis melodramatically put it, "Some good men always carried away scars. And the finality and exclusiveness of the choosing created and would continue to create a faint and enduring fault line in the Yale brotherhood." And, while Bones was hardly immune to cronyism and nepotism, high-achieving outsiders did occasionally win admission to the episcopacy's
[CTRL] What's really wrong with Skull and Bones - Tomb of Their Own
-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/041700/foer041700.html Click Here: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/041700/foer041700.html"> TNR Online | Tomb of Their Own by Franklin Foer - What's really wrong with Skull and Bones. Tomb of Their Own By FRANKLIN FOER Issue date: 04.17.00 Post date: 04.06.00 "A secret society so powerful it can give you anything you desire ... at a price." --trailer for The Skulls The skulls is a movie about George W. Bush's wild youth. Of course, it's not billed that way. No Hollywood studio would explicitly make a picture about a current presidential contender. But the subject of The Skulls is clear enough: the corrupting influence of a secret society, blatantly modeled after Yale's notorious Skull and Bones, of which Bush was once a devoted member. The depiction of Skull and Bones in the film--just the latest addition to a minor industry of Bonesiana--pretty much captures the prevailing media view of the institution: an aristocratic, all-powerful cabal. Membership, at least according to the movie, entitles the Bonesman to $20,000, a sports car, and a harem of gorgeous women. The Skulls control the university and the local cops. The society's alumni--senators and judges--sit around sipping champagne, chitchatting about hunting, and conspiring to suppress their enemies. Throughout the film, the Skulls' critics fall back on the same mantra: "If it's secret and it's elite, it can't be good." That's half right. Actually, the problem with the Skull and Bones of today may be that it's not forthrightly elitist enough. Skull and Bones, along with Yale's other secret societies, isn't the fusty, preppy, creepy conspiracy it once was. These societies ditched most of the nude wrestling, weird rituals, and boarding-school elitism long ago. In fact, they've spent the past decade running hard in the other direction. To put it crudely, Yale's secret societies--once ground zero of the Eastern establishment--are now high temples of political correctness, the ultimate in Ivy League identity politics. This year's class of Bonespeople has more women than men and as many African Americans as WASPS. Conservatives are scarce. Skull and Bones has democratized--but not in a very productive way. Back when the societies were proudly, offensively elitist, they had a purpose and a paternalistic sense of duty. Bones bragged that it would shape the characters of those who would shape the world. Today, the students in Skull and Bones find that kind of noblesse oblige deeply embarrassing. And, in their efforts to inoculate themselves against charges of elitism, the new elites have directed their energy to less grandiose concerns: namely, themselves. Skull and Bones, once a group for public-minded elites, has become the exact opposite--group therapy. Skull and Bones' roots can be traced to 1826, when a New York bricklayer named William Morgan disappeared just as he was preparing to publish a book that would unveil the secrets of his Masonic lodge. The Morgan case grabbed headlines and sparked a national backlash against all secret societies. In a populist whirl, Harvard and Yale Universities forced their most prominent secret society, Phi Beta Kappa, to ditch its secrecy. The Yale men, angry at having their mystery stripped away, rebelled and created Skull and Bones in 1832. Again, the faculty campaigned to stamp out the clandestine club, but this merely increased its cachet. By the 1850s, when it built its spooky, windowless sepulchre on High Street, Bones had become an exclusive hangout for Yale's top students. They'd get together to perform goofy gothic rituals with coffins, robes, and mud, but mainly they would talk about trendy literature that wasn't covered in Yale's classrooms. Eventually, the guys who couldn't win spots in Bones went off and started their own secret societies. Harvard students also responded to the demise of Phi Beta Kappa by establishing their own exclusive havens: the finals clubs. But these were never more than a Gold Coast, a place for the richest students to socialize with one another and turn up their noses at the rest of the student body. Skull and Bones, on the other hand, steered a more high-minded course. Even when it admitted only men from Groton and Hotchkiss and some of its members touted eugenics, Bones bragged of being a meritocracy. If you excelled in extracurricular activities--as editor of the Yale Daily News or captain of the football team, for example--Skull and Bones tapped you. It's an ethos celebrated in the 1911 novel Stover at Yale, which explains that election to Bones "stands as a reward for merit here." Men spent their college careers positioning themselves for a tap. Rejection was crushing. Or, as Sinclair Lewis melodramatically put it, "Some good men always carried away scars. And the finality and exclusiveness of the choosing created and would continue to create a faint and enduring fault line in the Yale brotherhood." And, while Bone
