Wolf's Head Society
Secret society based at Yale University, New Haven
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolf's Head Society is a senior secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1883. The society is one of the "Big Three" and "Ancient Eight" societies at Yale. Active undergraduate membership is elected annually with sixteen Yale University students, typically rising seniors.
| Wolf's Head Society | |
|---|---|
| |
| Founded | 1883 Yale University |
| Type | Senior society |
| Affiliation | Independent |
| Status | Active |
| Scope | Local |
| Member badge |  |
| Chapters | 1 |
| Nickname | The Third Society, Greyfriars |
| Headquarters | 214 York Street New Haven, Connecticut 06511 United States |
History
Fifteen rising seniors from the Yale Class of 1884, with help from members of the Yale Class of 1883 who were considered publicly possible taps for the older societies, abetted the creation of The Third Society in 1883. Founding members included William Lyon Phelps and Franklin Davis Bowen.[1][2] The society changed its name to Wolf's Head five years later.[3][4][5]
The effort was aided by more than 300 Yale College alumni[6][7] and a few Yale Law School faculty, in part to counter the dominance of the Skull and Bones Society in undergraduate and university affairs.[5]
The founding defeated the last attempt by the administration or the student body to abolish secret or senior societies at Yale.[8] The tradition continued of creating and sustaining a society if enough potential rising seniors thought they had been overlooked: Bones was established in 1832 after a dispute over selections for Phi Beta Kappa awards; Scroll and Key Society, the second society at Yale, was established in 1841 after a dispute over elections to Bones.
The Third Society's founding was motivated in part by sentiment among some young men that they deserved insider status. "[A] certain limited number were firmly convinced that there had been an appalling miscarriage of justice in their individual omission from the category of the elect," some founders agreed.[5][9][10]
Antecedents
Before the founding in 1780 at Yale of the Connecticut Alpha chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the second chapter established after that society's founding in 1776 (which still practices a secret handshake among members),[11] Yale College students established and joined literary societies.[12] By the 1830s, the campus literary societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and Calliopean had lost stature. Calliopean folded in 1853, and the others shut down after the American Civil War.[13] Calliopean, Linonia, and Brothers in Unity existed respectively: 1819–1853, 1768–1878, and 1735–1868.[14]
From the mid-1840s until 1883, several societies were started, but each failed to sustain the interest of liberal arts students at Yale College, broadly known as the Academical Department.[15] Star and Dart, Sword and Crown, Tea-Kettle, Spade and Grave, and E.T.L. disbanded.[16]
Phi Beta Kappa was inactive at Yale from 1871 to 1884, coinciding in part with a national reorganization of the society.[17] In the 1820s, Anti-Masonic agitation sweeping across the United States prompted PBK to examine the role of secrecy in its proceedings. Associated with PBK's national reorganization in 1881, secrecy disappeared as a signature among all chapters, quelling rivalry with collegiate fraternities, clubs and societies.[18] Hence, secrecy was soon shelved at the Yale chapter.[19] 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 becoming an institution of national rather than regional importance. Students who hailed from environs beyond New England or who were not Congregationalist or Presbyterian entered the college in large numbers.[20]
The faculty and administration were dominated by alumni of Bones, numbering four out of five faculty members between 1865 and 1916. Bones alumni were university secretaries from 1869 to 1921. Bones alumni were university treasurers for forty-three of the forty-eight years between 1862 - 1910.[21][22] Five of the first six Yale Corporation elected Alumni Fellows were members of Bones.[23]
Dissatisfaction grew: In 1873, The Iconoclast, a student paper published once, October 13, 1873, advocated for the abolition of the society system. It opined:[24][25]
"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 Yale Daily News first appeared on January 28, 1878. A memoir of the first college daily's birth records its first year strategy to "rag" the societies.[26]
The Class of 1884 unanimously agreed to support a new revolt against the society system by issuing a vote of no confidence to coincide with their graduation. There was a widespread understanding that the existing society system was irredeemable and likely to be abolished.
A spirited defense of the society system appeared in the May 1884 issue of The New Englander, written and published by members of Scroll and Key. Several periodicals reported regularly on the situation.[27]
Establishment
The initial delegation, including ten Class Day officers from the Class of 1884 and led by Edwin Albert Merritt, met in secret during their senior year with the aid of members of the Class of 1883 who were "eager to start a society provided the evil features of the old societies would be eliminated. [The graduating and rising seniors] were unanimous on this point." Included among the supporters from the Class of 1883 were members touted as sure selections to Bones or Keys by the publishers of the Horoscope, an undergraduate publication that provided feature material on the most likely taps. The pro-society seniors won the Class Day vote, 67 - 50.[28]
The new society was conceived on or about June 5, 1883. Among undergraduates the fledgling group was known as the "Fox and Grapes" for the Aesopian fable of jealousy, The Fox and the Grapes.[29]
The two older societies suffered by comparison with Wolf's Head.[30] The New Haven Register reported in 1886:[31]
"Wolf's Head is not as far out of the world, in respect to its public doings, as are [Bones and Keys]. There is a sufficient veil of secrecy drawn around its mechanism, however, to class it with the secret societies, and this gives it a stability and respectability in Yale College circles that it might not have otherwise...."
The society was managed similarly to finals clubs associated with the Sheffield Scientific School; however, it soon took on almost all aspects of the older societies.[5] Today, Wolf's Head is a member of the "Big Three," which includes Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones, and the "Ancient Eight" societies which includes Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, Mace and Chain, and St. Elmo’s.[32][33]
Early stature
The Third Society sat at the apex of a social pyramid bricked by junior societies (sophomore societies were abolished in 1875, freshman societies in 1880),[34] campus organizations, athletic teams, clubs, and fraternities.[35][36]
In 1888, the society changed its name to Wolf's Head Society, consonant with the approval among undergraduates of the society's pin, a stylized wolf's head on an inverted ankh, an Egyptian hieroglyphic known as the Egyptian Cross or "the key of life". The earliest undergraduate members allowed fellow schoolmates to handle the pin, a specific refutation of the pin displayed by the older societies. Eternal life is symbolized rather than death or erudition. A Roman fasces had been considered as a design element for the pin.[5][37]
Point of view
Many pioneering and subsequent members mocked as "poppycock" (from the Dutch for "soft excrement")[38] the seemingly Masonic-inspired rituals and atmosphere associated with Skull and Bones. The sentiment was widespread in the Yale community, particularly among undergraduates. In their The Pirates of Penzance prank, Wolf's Head members persuaded the thespian pirate king to display the numbers 322 (part of the emblem of Skull and Bones) below a skull and crossbones at a local theatre.[39] In another example, Yale President A. Whitney Griswold deprecated the rituals as "bonesy bullshit" and "Dink Stover crap" coloring undergraduate life.[40]
Wolf's Head did maintain many traditional practices, such as the Thursday and Sunday meetings, which were common among its peers. Paul Moore, Jr., long-time Senior Fellow and successor trustee (1964 - 1990) for the Yale Corporation and long-tenured bishop in the Episcopal Church (United States), recalled the night before he first encountered combat in World War II: [41][42]
"I spent the evening on board ship being quizzed by [a friend from Harvard] about what went on in Wolf's Head. He could not believe I would hold back such irrelevant secrets the night before I faced possible death."
Symbols
The primary symbol of the Wolf's Head Society is its official badge, which depicts a wolf's head above an upside down ankh in gold.[43] Manufactured by Tiffany & Co., the 18k gold badge functions as the society's principal emblem and as a marker of membership.[43][44]
The Halls
Old Hall
The original tomb, or Old Hall, was erected within months of the founding. The older academic department societies met originally for decades in rented quarters near campus. Skull and Bones opened its tomb in 1856, more than two decades after its founding.[45] Scroll and Key did likewise; it opened its tomb in 1869 more than two decades after the society's founding.
The former domicile, located at 77 Prospect Street, across the street from the Grove Street Cemetery, was a Richardsonian Romanesque building commissioned for the Phelps Trust Association and designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White. It was completed in 1884. It was purchased by the university in 1924, rented to Chi Psi fraternity (1924–29), Book and Bond (defunct society) (1934–35), and Vernon Hall (now Myth and Sword) (1944–54). It currently houses the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies.[46]
A building with narrow windows, the domicile was noted as "the most modern and handsomest" of same purpose structures by The New York Times in 1903. The building was erected in 1884 soon after the founding members secured financing.[5]
New Hall
Bertram Goodhue, architect, designed the New Hall, c. 1924; it was built posthumously. Goodhue was a protege of James Renwick Jr., architect of the first St. Anthony Hall chapter house in New York City.[47]
The tomb has stone walls and wrought iron fencing and is central to the largest secret society compound on campus. The compound commands the most prominent location on campus beyond Harkness Tower, the very icon of Yale,[48] and the Memorial Quadrangle. The domicile opened in the mid-1920s and sits fronted by York Street surrounded by the Yale Daily News Briton Hadden Memorial building, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. The original School of Drama and Theatre as well as the Briton Hadden Memorial Building, were gifts to Yale from Edward Harkness.[47]
Phelps Trust Association
The Phelps Trust Association, also referred to in more recent nonprofit filings as the Phelps Association, is the historical association connected with Wolf's Head.[49][50] Yale University Library catalogs the society as "Wolf's Head Society (Phelps Trust Association)," and Yale sources on Wolf's Head's former hall at 77 Prospect Street identify the Phelps Trust Association as the client behind the building.[51][52][53]
Federal tax filings describe the association's mission as supporting "the educational, social and professional development of its members through association activities".[54] Those filings also show that it maintains endowment funds and land and buildings, indicating that it serves as the body that administers property and financial resources associated with Wolf's Head.[55] Yale prize records further show that the association has sponsored or held in trust Yale awards including the C. Wyllys Betts Prize and the Henry H. Strong Prize in English.[56] According to 2024 filing data published by ProPublica, the Phelps Association reported total assets of $9,501,303.[57]
Edward John Phelps, Envoy to the Court of St. James's, accepted the offer in 1885 to be namesake to the Wolf's Head alumni association.[5]
Membership
Wolf's Head selects new members during Yale's spring Tap Night, part of the university's annual senior-society tap process.[58] According to Yale Alumni Magazine, a society council sets the dates for Tap Night and for when prospective members can first be contacted. A week before Tap Night, societies may begin offering membership to candidates, who do not have to commit until Tap Night itself.[58] As one of Yale's older "landed" senior societies, Wolf's Head follows the general pattern described for those societies, which typically consist of 16 rising seniors chosen each spring.[58]
Wolf's Head was the last of Yale's all-male senior societies to admit women.[59] In December 1991, the society's alumni voted to approve coeducational membership, and later accounts describe Wolf's Head as having begun tapping women in 1992.[60][59] Public information about the society's internal selection process remains limited, and specific membership criteria are not publicly detailed.[58] The society has been reputed to tap the gregarious "prep school type."[61][62]Past members were associated intimately with the: coeducation of Yale College,[63] establishment of the Yale residential college system and the Harvard house system,[64] founding of the Elizabethan Club,[65] and founding of the Yale Political Union.[66]
Yale societies contrast sharply with Harvard finals clubs on membership criteria. Contributions to undergraduate life have been historically among the criteria for membership in Yale societies. Finals clubs overlook that quality among prospective members.[67][68]
Traditions and activities
Publicly documented Wolf's Head traditions center on Yale's annual Tap Night and the society's weekly meetings during members' senior year. Yale Alumni Magazine has described the older "landed" senior societies, including Wolf's Head, as maintaining long-standing traditions that are preserved with the help of alumni, and reported that societies of this type generally meet on Thursday and Sunday evenings for member biographies, discussion, dinner, and social activities.[69] The same source notes that senior societies continue to participate in Tap Week's public displays each spring.[69] In a 2009 account of Tap Night, the Yale Daily News reported that Wolf's Head members "howled periodically throughout the night."[70] Another reported snow wrestling matches in the yard during winter.[71]
The society's private activities are conducted from its hall at 214 York Street, which Yale's New Haven Building Archive lists as a student society hall built in 1924.[72] Archival records also document alumni-oriented traditions associated with the society, including a photograph identified as "Wolf's Head Alumni Dinner" in Yale's Guide to the Yale Clubs and Societies Photographs.[73] Because Wolf's Head operates privately, many of its internal rituals and customs are not publicly described in detail.[69]
Popular culture
- In Ninth House, Wolf's Head is described as having historical involvement in recruiting for the CIA and even a 1982 incident involving the re-animation of a dinosaur statue.
- In Owen Johnson's 1911 Yale campus novel Stover at Yale, the society is mentioned by name during a Tap Day scene.[74] The novel's depiction of Yale society culture was later described by Time as having captivated "generations of schoolboys".[75]