As a collegiate fraternity, the Flat Hat Club predates Phi Beta Kappa, which was founded at William & Mary in 1776 and is now the leading academic honor society for undergraduates in the arts and sciences.

's badge featured a Rococo rendering of the Society's coat of arms on the reverse, and "FHC" in a large monogram on the obverse, with the date "Nov. XI.

[6] The Media Council has direct financial control over The Flat Hat, which is supervised and run through William & Mary's Student Assembly.

In the editorial, Kaemmerle advocated for racial integration at William & Mary and argued that "the Negroes should be recognized as equals in our minds and hearts."

[8] In 1962, The Flat Hat published an editorial critical of then-president Davis Young Paschall's decision to prohibit a communist speaker from appearing on campus.

[9] Subsequently, Paschall summoned then-editor H. Mason Sizemore and other staff members to a meeting in the Blue Room of the Wren Building.

[3] The website is updated daily with printed articles, online blogs, videos, podcasts, photojournalism stories, and the embedded pdf of its most recent Issuu.

[15] In October 2006, The Flat Hat was the first news outlet, student or professional, to report on the controversy surrounding the removal of a cross from the Wren Chapel.

[16] Starting with a news brief, the paper continued to provide in-depth coverage as the issue unfolded, including the revocation of a twelve-million-dollar donation,[17] the placement of the cross in a display case,[18] and, ultimately, the resignation of College President Gene Nichol,[19] which was partly attributed to the Wren Chapel controversy.

[21] In January 2010, The Flat Hat was the first news source to report that ESPN continued to use a William & Mary athletic emblem that had been banned by the NCAA in 2006.