Antecedents
From the mid-1840s until 1883, five societies were incorporated but each failed to sustain the interest of the Academic Department or liberal arts students. Groups named Star and Dart, Sword and Crown, Tea-Kettle, Spade and Grave, and E.T.L. failed to join the ranks of the sustaining societies.
By the 1830s the campus literary societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and Calliope were losing prominence. Calliope folded in 1853 and the others shut down after the American Civil War. Calliope, Linonia, and Brothers in Unity existed respectively: 1819-1853, 1768–1878, and 1735-1868.
Phi Beta Kappa was inactive 1871 to 1884 at Yale. In the 1820s Anti-Masonic agitation across the United States of America prompted PBK to examine the role of secrecy in its proceedings. Secrecy was soon shelved at the Yale chapter. Associated with PBK's national reorganization in 1881, secrecy disappeared as a signature among all chapters, quelling rivalry with collegiate fraternities, clubs and societies. PBK exists today, without any secrecy, as an academic honor society.
Beginning in the 1850s, the Yale undergraduate student body grew more diverse. The college was ceasing to be an institution of regional importance where cohesion stemmed from deeply held and shared social beliefs. Students who hailed from environs beyond New England or who weren't Congregationalist or Presbyterian entered the college in large number.
The faculty was populated solidly with alumni of Bones, numbering 4 out of 5 faculty members between 1865 and 1916. Bones alumni were university secretary 1869 - 1921. Bones alumni were university treasurer forty-three of the forty-eight years between 1862 - 1910.
In 1873 The Iconoclast, a student paper published once, 13 October, advocated for the abolition of the society system. It opined: "Out of every class Skull and Bones takes its men...They have obtained control of Yale. Its business is performed by them. Money paid to the college must pass into their hands, and be subject to their will....It is Yale College against Skull and Bones!! We ask all men, as a question of right, which should be allowed to live?" The Class of 1884 agreed to support another revolt against the society system with a vote of no confidence to coincide with its graduation. It had been understood that the society system was beyond reform and might well be abolished.
A spirited defense of the society system appeared in the May 1884 issue of The New Englander, authored by a member of Scroll and Key. Several periodicals reported regularly on the situation. However, The Third Society had been incorporated in 1883, quashing the last serious attempt to ban undergraduate societies at Yale, and continuing a tradition among undergraduates of complaining about the societies but joining or establishing one if the opportunity opened.
Read more about this topic: Wolf's Head (secret Society)
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