[2] Active undergraduate membership is elected annually with sixteen Yale University students, typically rising seniors.

[3][4][5] Some past members have gained prominence in athletics, business, the fine and literary arts, higher education, journalism, and politics.

[8] The founding defeated the last attempt by the administration or the student body to abolish secret or senior societies at Yale.

"[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.

[17] 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.

Associated with PBK's national reorganization in 1881, secrecy disappeared as a signature among all chapters, quelling rivalry with collegiate fraternities, clubs and societies.

[26] Dissatisfaction grew: In 1873, The Iconoclast, a student paper published once, October 13, 1873, advocated for the abolition of the society system.

[29] 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.

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.

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.

[8][38] Many pioneering and subsequent members mocked as "poppycock" (from the Dutch for "soft excrement")[39] the seemingly Masonic-inspired rituals and atmosphere associated with Skull and Bones.

[40] In another example, Yale President A. Whitney Griswold's deprecated the rituals as "bonesy bullshit" and "Dink Stover crap" coloring undergraduate life.

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: "I spent the evening on board ship being quizzed by [a friend from Harvard] about what went on in Wolf's Head.

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).

[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 original School of Drama and Theatre as well as the Briton Hadden Memorial Building, were gifts to Yale from Edward Harkness.

[55] 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.