Collegiate secret societies in North America

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.

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.

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.

Fordham University was long accused of being involved with secret societies and covert activities due to anti-Catholic and nativist sentiments against the Irish and Italian immigrants it historically served.

Founded at The College of Charleston in 1904, Pi Kappa Phi operated "sub-rosa", or under the rose of secrecy, for much of the twentieth century to hide their activities from the university's Baptist administrators.

The initiation ritual and all group meetings take place in the Old College, the original building where James Furman taught the university's first courses in Greenville in 1851.

Famous Quaternions have included U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and Clement Haynsworth, a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Black Swan or Paladin Brotherhood was a darker organization rumored to have operated on and off from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s, utilizing the unfinished attic of Judson dormitory for occult rituals.

Founded in 1908, Anak's purpose is "to honor outstanding juniors and seniors who have shown both exemplary leadership and a true love for Georgia Tech".

The society also claims involvement in several civil rights projects, most notably in peacefully integrating Georgia Tech's first African-American students in 1961, preventing the Ku Klux Klan from setting up a student chapter at Georgia Tech.Harvard University does not have secret societies in the usual sense, though it does have final clubs, fraternities, sororities, and a variety of other secret or semi-secret organizations.

Most notably, IN8 is known for its laud of eight students per semester who have outstanding college careers and fulfill the organization's 8 supposed core values: Loyalty, Benevolence, Service, Justice, Integrity, Intellect, Character, and Spirit.

In addition, in 2003, they donated a human sundial, a spot in the middle of campus where a person stands on a particular month’s mark and casts a shadow on plaques six or seven feet away that designates the time.”[46] The second secret society at James Madison University is called Missed Connections.

The school selects “a small number of men and women from the senior class who demonstrated excellence in academic, personal, and spiritual integration and a commitment to leadership and service to Loyola.

The third-oldest and second-longest consistently operating secret society at Longwood is Princeps, which was founded in 1992 on the premise of promoting citizen leadership and academic excellence.

[61] Hat societies were involved in University life passing down traditions (called "freshmen customs") for first-year students, forming honor guards for football players as they went on to the field, and recognizing leaders, scholars, and athletes in the Penn State community.

Lion's Paw is closely associated with conservation efforts at Mount Nittany in State College, PA.[63] Princeton's eating clubs are not fraternities, nor are they secret societies by any standard measure, but they are often seen as being tenuously analogous.

[76] The Society voted to officially disband in 1968 as a sign of its "counterculture" values, electing to donate its office space to the student radio group WHPK and use its remaining funds for the purchase of an FM transmitter.

[79] The subsequent trial determined that Florida Blue Key "has historically undertaken a political function in connection with student government affairs.

Palladia inducts approximately twelve women each fall and has an extensive network of alumni, including administrators at the University of Georgia and prominent female leaders across the state.

During this period of rapid expansion of secret societies, a network of sub-rosa inter-fraternity organizations also established itself on campus with no purpose other than socializing and mischief-making.

It is currently home to at least six secret honor societies that still participate in an annual public Taies Day ceremony at the end of each spring semester.

Mystical Seven and Oklahoma's Pe-et Society were likewise entrusted with the Peace Pipe trophy that was awarded to the winner of the biennial Missouri-Oklahoma football match.

None of these societies was intended to be secret, in that their undergraduate and alumni membership were and continue to be publicly known, they share many of the characteristics of undergraduate secret societies of the time; they tap a diverse group of campus leaders to become members during their senior year, organize social and service activities throughout the year, and maintain an extensive network of successful and notable alumni.

The University of Texas at Austin is home to the Tejas Club, an all-male secret society founded in 1925 that is one of the oldest student organizations on campus.

Not much is known about the founding of the group or its selection process from the early years other than the fact that only the members themselves knew who belonged to ThurtenE and membership varied from 4 to 14, before finally settling on a consistent 13.

Members made themselves known at the end of their senior year during graduation by wearing a small skull pin and having the number “13” listed next to their names in Washington University's yearbook "The Hatchet".

Students are chosen during the spring from the freshman class based on academic merit, extracurricular involvement, leadership capabilities and roles, and personal qualities through an application and interview process.

All the societies were independent, all had their traditions, and each class-year pair or trio shared common traits appropriate to their class year; the freshmen societies were rambunctious and owned little real property, the sophomore and junior ones were progressively more elaborate, (the sophomore ones regularly maintained live theater in their halls), and the senior ones were extremely small and elite, and with quite expensive property and celebrations.

[119][120] In the past century, the size of Yale has allowed for a wider variety of student societies, including regular college fraternity chapters, and other models, so it can be challenging to categorize the organizations.

[citation needed] During 1854–1956, the Sheffield Scientific School was the sciences and engineering college of Yale University, and it also had a fraternal culture that differed in some respects from the humanities campus.