The Hidden Truth About Yale's Most Secret Societies

welcome welcome welcome friends it's your boy kev and today i'm going to be talking about a particularly spicy topic secret societies at yale university okay i've written down some very common questions how do you get into a secret society how many of them are there which part is secret how does the tap process actually work do you have to pay what's the commitment level what are some of your favorite memories what's your experience like i will be breaking down and answering all of these questions in this video and more alright let's start off with the

basic info how many secret societies are there at you according to this 2017 article that i just read before i hit the record button there were about 40. i actually think there's more now seniors have recently just been starting their own societies if they didn't get into one or if they didn't like the culture of existing societies so probably 50 to 60 which also matches the number of seniors the percentage of seniors who are in secret societies typically secret societies are one-year societies although there are some two-year i think there might be a three-year two

and a half year society at yale but yeah mainly one year senior secret societies so i think about 40 percent or maybe 50 percent of seniors are a part of a society but as it turns out not everyone sticks with it because it's a very heavy very large time commitment you hang out with a group of usually 15 other people or two nights a week and sometimes it lasts the whole night from like 6 p.m all the way until midnight or more and sometimes there are even additional activities that take place during the weekend you

have to talk to alumni where there's a retreat and things like that and because of the nature of secret societies you're so you're put into this group right with 15 other people you may or may not like them and so some people end up deciding that the effort isn't worth it and will just drop and hang out with people that they already know they already like some of the more famous secret societies include skull and bones scrolling key wolf's head the elizabethan club and yeah i think that uh because there are so many notable wealthy

alumni the actual endowment and the the trusts are actually quite large as well in the millions of dollars range we're talking about and these very wealthy societies are called landed societies because they have their own tomb or building on campus and some of them have private chefs they have dining halls or dining areas kind of inside so yeah they're pretty exquisite guys which part is secret well the secret societies used to be like really really secret like you didn't know who was in what society now you didn't know what happened in the society you didn't

even know where the society was no i'm kidding the buildings are pretty big on campus so it's kind of hard to miss these days what's not secret is who is in what society pretty much everyone openly shares and they're like oh you're in avaya thing you're in spade and grave which is a society i was a part of do you know so and so i heard they're also in spain and grave i guess they're such a wonderful human being and it's actually a fun way to play this kind of mutual friend game and end up

with more acquaintances more buddies by the time you graduate from you so who is in the society that's not sacred at all where the society is that's also not secret what is secret though is the tap process and after you're chosen the customs the traditions that happen as well as what goes on inside of the tomb is usually secret some people don't even allow guests inside of the house unless there's very special circumstances and in our society we shared our life stories it was something called an autobiographical society or a biosociety for short and obviously

i wouldn't go around spewing the secrets of my fellow society members and just sharing their life story with strangers that is totally not allowed that is in fact the most sacred part of the society experience which is like what happens in the house kind of stays in the house again these rules vary from society to society but that's how we ran it back in my day so yeah speaking of tap tap is the process in which juniors are selected to be a part of the secret society now some tap processes are really uh secret others

are a little bit more open but generally speaking i would say they do revolve around some sort of interview people want to get to know you on a more human level and it's tough sometimes there's just one interview sometimes there are two or three interviews it depends on the society they have multiple rounds and they'll funnel you so typically each person who is in the society who's a senior will get to select three to five it depends on the society how many juniors you get to select but for for us it was like three to

five and then you kind of have this list and whittle it down we did interviews that's pretty much all i'll share for now but uh i guess i could talk about another society's interview yeah that should be fine all right so i remember i went to one society name is not important but anyways they led me to this table and there was about like 10 people sitting all around me and so there's a side table so i went to the side table and they're like okay pick an object so i picked an object and it

ended up being this like beer dispenser thing i actually thought it was a bong it was not a bong it was anyways i brought it to the main table and they're like okay kevin please sell me this item and so i made up this really elaborate story about how like when my dad came to america he had this beer object dispenser it was actually his bosses and he stole this from his boss because his boss was being mean to him at work and i told him it was like a sacred family object and basically it

wasn't for sale so this was i was pretty proud of this guys natural natural born salesman kevin so this guy was like all right how much do you want for it i was like it's not for sale and they're like well you got to give me a dollar amount i was like um i guess if i were to give you a dollar amount maybe i could sell it to you for like 500 bucks and this dude was like what 500 no way how about 100. i was like this is a family this is a sacred

family object and you're asking me to to hand this over for cold hard cash this is this is a i shouldn't even be talking to you and anyways we went back and forth back and forth he was like 500 he was like 200 and i was like no 500 250 i was like no 500 i'm leaving and so he actually said he would give me 500 for it that was really fun and everyone was laughing about that but yeah they'll ask ask other kinds of questions like you know tell me something you've never told anyone

before or when was the last time you cried like very intimate questions like that some of them do you know an interview where it's like you and one other person from the society or they'll be like hey can you teach me something so i would taught them how to do a baby freeze breakdance and then some societies everyone interviews that one person so 16 people interrogating one person cross the table in a wooden chair again procedures may vary from group to group i have a few other questions written down do you have to pay yes

i'm pretty sure most societies ask you to pay that's how they fund you know her drinking habits i don't remember the exact amount for us but i think it was a couple hundred dollars per semester and then whatever you didn't spend you could it's just kind of redistributed back to the society members we also use the funds to do retreat that's something i can definitely talk about basically drive off to some airbnb you guys hang out together eat together drink together play together get to know each other there's usually one in the fall and one

in the spring oh man fall retreat what a blast the secret society that i was a part of we met every thursday and sunday sometimes we would have little outings we'd have mixers with other societies we would dance together party together and sometimes we would just go out on little outings we would eat at a little nice restaurant and yeah i mean it was just a really wonderful way to get to know students that you normally would have never had the chance to interact with like for instance my secret society had a lot of athletes

and the thing about athletes at yale is that they work super duper hard heads down you know wake up early you usually don't even see them because they're out during the weekends and they're training so hard so a lot of athletes don't even get a chance to participate in normal extracurricular activities like clubs and things like that we had a lot of captains of you know sports teams who were in our society we also had heads of people who led like frats and sororities in our society and that just wasn't a part of you that

i was previously exposed to so i thought it was really really awesome to get to know them on a human level like i said we shared our entire life stories so that process sometimes would take three hours three to five hours and on the nights that we weren't being vulnerable getting to know each other and pulling at each other's heart strings we would be partying usually drinking dancing together sometimes we just had like very wholesome experiences like i really like to cook so i would cook a meal for like all the society members and then

we would go and hang out and that sort of thing i think it was probably one of the best experiences i've ever had in my entire life i got really really close with my society members like i didn't think that i would be meeting such great friends so close to the end of my yale career i don't want to say career eo experience i think a few of my really best friends i met during those last those last few months and uh man what i'd give to keep hanging out with them again criticisms of the

secret society system some people say that's very exclusive i don't think that's particularly true in fact when they're tapping juniors there's like a google doc a google excel spreadsheet that's sent out to all the seniors and they can see which societies are picking which juniors because you don't want to have a case where it's like oh 20 society's picking this one person in that case we might as well focus on another person chances are they're not going to pick us back right so one very popular junior could get bids could get taps from lots of

different societies and they can only pick one and in that case sometimes what happens at the end of the tap process is people are really scrambling because you thought that those juniors would say yes to the society for some reason they picked another one they didn't want to be a part of your society and so now you're scrambling and you you have to find people to fill those spots i would say like most seniors if you want to be a part of a society chances are you can be a part of a society where they're

not like trying to exclude you in fact they're trying to include you generally speaking the society experience has been told to be very white and wealthy and i found that to be partly true in in our case although our society really values diversity and made a deliberate effort to try to include people from different socio-economic backgrounds people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds that can be kind of hard too now that i know you know we were picking juniors for the year after us and it's kind of hard like how do you know if someone's

poor like how do you figure that out you can't really ask you like kind of know the person but sometimes you don't really know the junior underneath right sometimes you pick your friends sometimes you pick someone who you think would be just like a great fit for your society and who shares those core values it really is kind of tricky i don't have like a clear-cut answer i don't think it's so simple but it was a challenge that we faced i hope you guys found this video helpful let me know if you have any questions

in the comment section below i am constantly rooting for you guys your success is my success take it easy i'll catch you guys the next one papa peace