Secret Societies at Yale

Zippership
Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:37:59 +0000

Okay, senior at Yale here. Secret societies play little to no difference on campus life here except for providing us with lots of entertaining people dressed up in costumes around this time of year (around when Tap Night is). Seriously not something to worry about at Yale. Societies, once the “goal” of a Yale education, have now been relegated to the realm of amusement for those in it. This is something to keep in mind at other schools though, as Harvard’s social scene still revolves somewhat around Finals clubs and Princeton’s around Eating Clubs.

If you want to know a little more though, I’ll explain. People are tapped into societies in April of their Junior Year. The tapping for some societies is based on line taps (as in the captain of the Football team always gets a Bones tap, etc.) or based on nomination by the members. It’s very dependent on who you know and is all kind of silly. People in socities get together every Sunday and Thursday and give 7 hour presentations about everything in their life (called Bios) to the other members of the group with the goal being that you get to know the other people in the society (who are often chosen because they’ve lived very cool lives) a lot better. That’s it. Nothing more.