Talk:List of collegiate secret societies

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	List of collegiate secret societies is part of the Fraternities and Sororities WikiProject, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Greek Life on the Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to International social societies, local organizations, honor societies, and their members. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, visit the project page, where you can join the project, and/or contribute to the discussion.
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If these societies are known about how are they secret? KingStrato 07:37, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Their existence, and the facts presented, are (I hope) verifiable from referenced reliable sources. Their membership or other details may be secret. All must be verifiable, and must have some element of secrecy. Any that don't have both of those should be removed. The burden of proof is on those who wish to include an entry. Tom Harrison ^Talk 13:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Care needs to be taken to determine whether or not some of these "societies" listed here are nothing more than local fraternities claiming to be "secret societies" even though they may have a seperate wiki entry. Case in point, I removed The William Penn Society. It's difficult at times to tell what makes an organization a secret society versus just some social club but usually secret societies don't have websites run by them which includes a full roster as well as current events and pictures. That goes completely against what a secret society is. Membership rosters are almost always kept secret unless someone outside the organization happens to come across this information. I was once told that being in a fraternity allows for connections which will get your foot in the door but in a secret society, you're already in. --† Ðy§ep§ion † ^{Speak your mind} 05:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

• Proposed guidelines for cleanup:

It appears that as the number of organizations here grows, describing it as a list of "notable" secret societies becomes less accurate. Perhaps there should be some standard tests which an organization must pass, using citations, to be listed. Or maybe we can split the list into notable and less notable.

Some of these groups appear to only be known within their college community, not generating discussion online, while others are known nationally. Some appear to focus on college pranks and socializing, not producing members of note, while others appear to be having a strong impact at their college or university and indeed affecting the nation with significant numbers of members in the upper strata of the nation’s business and government.

I would think that for a group to be considered "notable" it would need at least a couple of the following factors:

1. Historic in nature say apx. 100 years of continual activation.

2. Track record of pipeline networking.

3. Mentioned by a major news outlet that is independent, in other words not the school’s paper.

4. Public intrigue, for example non-member interest shown on online discussion forums, individual page on wikipedia.

5. Significant known contribution as a group, such as the contributions known to be made by the Seven Society.

6. Shown to have many members who are/were influential at a national level.

As † Ðy§ep§ion † ^{Speak your mind} says above, all of the groups should be more than glorified fraternities and have secrecy be a factor.

Groups not fitting this category could be moved to a more general college organization list or just linked from their college's or university's page.

Any thoughts on if anything needs to be done?

2afterblue 19:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a good rule of thumb: An organization that does not have a Wikipedia article is probably not notable by Wikipedia's standards. If a group lacking an article is actually notable, the best way to prove that is by creating an article. Nareek 20:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I question the additon of this page to the Fraternities and Sororities wikiproject. Some of these organizations have nothing to do with Greek life.

Also organizations like the Nebraska Innocents and the Maine Skulls that have "look at me" webpages probably don't exactly fall under the category secret society.2afterblue 15:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Which (if any) of these organizations are Greek-affiliated? I'm not aware that any of them are, in which case we should remove the project tag. schi ^talk 18:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello folks: I'm the author of the paragraphs in the past few days giving what I hope is interesting background on secret societies at Yale, however I am concerned that my contributions in this particular space go beyond the original paramaters of the page, which was simply a listing of collegiate societies. So I would welcome everyone's sense of whether background info. on college societies belongs here or elswehere. As a Yalie (and close observer of the secret society system there, yes, its a hobby!), I have nonetheless taken care to cite outside documentation for the core points instead of making original assertions. One primary point I am trying to illustrate is that, at least at Yale, its not possible to view fraternities, historically, as separate from secret societies (and the term secret society itself is not a fixed category). There is a complex melange and accretion of traditions that encompass the fraternal organizations at yale. there are commonalities, and there are differences, but they are in degree. So, yes, I would suggest that fraternities and societies are on the same spectrum as societies, and if others can add information to wikipedia on the background for societies at other campuses -- then such entries will have the broader purpose of putting these undergraduate organizations in context. I'm yale-centric, because I ama Yalie and that is the limit of my knowledge and I don't want to speculate on other schools, but I would suggest that at Yale, the secret society culture is so steeped in Yale history, and has had an effect on the real world outside yale, that this background belongs somewhere, and for now, I've put it at the head of the Yale listings. (Based on my anecdotal experience -- stress anecdotal -- several other US schools have as rich and lasting a presence on campus -- UVA, Georgetown, William and Mary, but Yale is in a class by itself in terms of the presence of the societies in campus life.) Back to the fraternity-versus-society categories -- all of these 19th century fraternals took things from the Masons. My understanding from reading articles about the Masons in North America was that when their rituals were revealed to the pubic by anti-Mason agitators, the result that the anti-masons wanted was to expose masonic ritual to daylight and snuff out the movement. The opposite happened: many american social groups with no relationship to Masons or to old Germanic university fraternities emulated Masonic rituals in a transparent atetmpt to add spice and drama to their own proceedings - and college fraternals did the same. Nothing more mysterious than that. All those animal-themed civic associations (Moose, Elks and other lodges), and sororal associations too, these are social groups attempting to add ritual and mystery to make their activities seem more meaningful and solemn. In the inbred and isolated setting of a campus, its only natural that these practices would have found fertile soil, evolved in many ways in that incubator, and endured for so long (at Yale) because of the rich endowments and buildings that their alumni established. Thanks for feedback. BoolaBoola2

I removed the following from the Dartmouth section:

"Secret society" at Dartmouth, as at Yale, is arguably a characterization rather than a fixed category. Dartmouth societies derive from various 19th c. fraternal organization traditions, "rooted in the Englightenment society-founding boom..." according to an article on the material legacy of these organizations at the link: "Halls, Tombs and Houses: Student Society Architecture at Dartmouth" See also: "Sense of Mystery Haunts Public and Private Buildings On and Off Campus"

I found this to be a bit confusing, and somewhat misleading. While it's true that at some points in the past, it may have been more difficult to meaningfully distinguish secret societies from "fraternal organizations", it's certainly not true that secret societies (at Dartmouth, at least) are more a characterization than a fixed category. In fact, they are entirely a fixed category. The College semi-coordinates the secret societies:[1] and maintain them in a perfectly fixed category. They are also formally distinct from the Greek system, which is what is understood when you say "fraternal organization" in the contemporary sense. schi ^talk 05:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Schi: Thanks for your explanation; your edits look good given your more accurate information. The "sense of mystery haunts..." article is a good resource but belongs elsewhere in the section then. I'll play with that some more and look forward to your and other's response. BoolaBoola2