Perhaps it is the chance to join the prestigious alumni. In fact, it is rare for a student to turn down a Skull and Bones tap. “It’s a ton of weird bitterness masquerading as humor,” said one student who asked that his name not be printed. The criticism and mocking is generally dismissed as jealousy from the untapped. Some of the tricked juniors were said to have cried. Then The Pundits gathered the juniors in a basement and revealed that it was all a joke. They blindfolded the juniors, told them to call other students’ answering machines and leave personal information. A group of students calling themselves “The Pundits” this year, tricked a handful of juniors into believing they were tapped. Skull and Bones has also spawned derisive imitations on campus. The societies, a student columnist wrote last week, “aggrandize the self-love of the already-egocentric.” “There is enough petty exclusion in this world without institutionalizing it at college,” wrote an editor at the Yale Daily News in 1998. In the days leading up to Tap Night, when juniors are singled out and interviewed as potential members, the campus newspaper can usually be trusted to publish a condemnation of the elitist overtones of the secret societies. And the new movie “The Skulls,” which depicts a nefarious secret society on the campus of a New Haven Ivy League school, has made the questions of what goes on inside that tomb a hot topic for teens across the country.īeyond suspicion, the Skull and Bones initiation inspires an annual debate. The members’ silence fans the mystery that has captivated generations of untapped Yalies. Skull and Bones members won’t say - even when faced with skeptics who claim the intrigue is baloney and the tomb hosts nothing more than mediocre dinners and tedious conversation. Some believe the CIA was developed inside the tomb. It is said it hosts dark ceremonies and debauchery on the scale of the movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.” It is said its privileged and soon-to-be-powerful members devise national security strategies. It is said it holds ancient bones - possibly a set belonging to Geronimo. It is said the tomb is filled with coffins.
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