Public Ivy - is a term coined by Richard Moll in his 1985 book Public Ivies: to refer to universities which provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price.  The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. ^[6] Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities is a compendium of fraternities and sororities in the United States and Canada first published in 1879.  It covers national and international general [social], professional, and honour fraternities, including defunct organisations, with an overview of each society’s history and traditions, ideals and symbols, and membership information.  The 20th and most recent edition, published in 1991, was over 1,200 pages long.

     Don’t think because these fraternities were mainly formed in the 1800’s, that it’s an ancient thing, because it’s not, as today in 2011, these groups are very much alive and kicking with far greater numbers of members than there has ever been before.  As I’ve mentioned, some college fraternities in the North American fraternity and sorority system have been organised into groupings called ‘Triads’, or ‘Duos’. ^[7] The Union Triad are three general fraternities all founded at Union College in New York: the Kappa Alpha Society established in 1825, - as of 2011 there are eight active chapters in the US and Canada.

     Sigma Phi formed in 1827 is the second oldest Greek fraternal organisation in the United States.  In addition, its Union College chapter has been in continual operation since it was founded, making it the oldest fraternity chapter in the United States.  The practices and rituals of the Sigma Phi Society are still relatively unknown, as they have continued as a secret society, - and the Delta Phi founded in1827, was the third and last member of this Triad, the organisation has never disbanded, making it the oldest continuously running social fraternity, and in fact these three are the oldest continuously existing Greek-letter social fraternities in North America. 

          Union College along with Miami University [for the Miami Triad] are considered the ‘Mother of Fraternities’.

     Delta Phi ^[8] and the other fraternities of the Union Triad were established during a time of strong anti-Masonic sentiment in the United States, and because fraternities were ‘secret societies’ at the time, they also became targets of the anti-Masonic movement.  This led Phi Beta Kappa, the original fraternity, to abandon ‘secrecy’ and become an ‘honour society’.  In the 1830’s member John Jay Hyde went on to design the badge still worn by members of Delta Phi, which includes a Maltese Cross, the symbol used by the Knights of Malta, and this connection with the Knights of Malta led Delta Phi to become known as the St. Elmo Club, a name first used by the ‘Omicron chapter’ at Yale University, which since has transformed into a senior secret society known as the St. Elmo Society.     

     The ‘brothers’ there used the name of ‘St. Elmo’, the patron saint of mariners and the Knights of Malta.  Some of Delta Phi’s chapter houses are also known as St. Elmo’s Hall.  St. Elmo Society, Elmo’s as many refer to it, is a secret society at Yale University, founded in 1889 as an independent entity for seniors within the nationally chartered fraternity, Delta Phi [ΔΦ], Omicron Chapter [1889-1925].  St. Elmo’s Sheff predecessors Berzelius [1848] and Book and Snake [1863] both still exist today in 2011. [‘Sheff’s’ as in Sheffield Scientific School founded in 1847, named so in 1861 in honour of Joseph E. Sheffield.] ^[9]             

     The Yale societies limited their membership to 15 or 16 in a class year, and it’s common to find similar numerical limits in many of these societies, as one of the advantages of such low numbers, is that it permits a more dedicated kind indoctrinating to be established between the leaders of the society and the initiate.  Extensive mortuary imagery is associated with many secret societies, i.e. a skull and bones, and again following Yale, clubhouses are often called tombs.

     The typical selection process for entry into a collegiate secret society began at Yale University by a process called tapping.  On a publicly announced evening, Yale undergraduates would assemble informally in the College Yard.  Current members of Yale’s secret societies would walk through the crowd and literally tap a prospective member on the shoulder and then walk with him up to the tapped man’s dorm room.  There, in private, they would ask him to become a member of their secret society, of which the inductee had the choice of accepting or rejecting the offer of membership.  During this process, it was publicly known who was being tapped for the coming year. ^[2]

     Today, the selection process is not quite as formal, but is still public.  Formal tapping days used to exist at Berkeley, and still exist in a much more formal setting at Missouri.  A very similar system of tapping and dorm room visits, take place in other colleges and universities around the world and in places such as Eton, Oxford and Cambridge etc., here in the UK.

     There are various common traits among these kinds of societies, such as the pattern for many of these societies, was set by the same practices at Yale.  For example, many societies have two part names which follow a pattern set by Yale’s oldest society the Skull & Bones, Wolf’s Head [WHS], or Scroll and Key Society, founded in 1841 at Yale University and the second oldest secret society there, - these groups are also known as the ‘big three societies’ at Yale.  The WHS society was founded when fifteen members of the Yale Class of 1884 choose to abet the creation of ‘The Third Society’, later known as Wolf’s Head Society, by the Phelps Trust Association in 1883.

     The Skull and Bones secret society is known informally as Bones, and as we know members are known as ‘Bonesmen’ and was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale’s debating societies, the Linonia, Brothers in Unity and the Calliope, over that season’s Phi Beta Kappa awards; its original name was the ‘Order of Skull and Bones’.  During the senior year each Skull and Bones class meets every Thursday and Sunday night.  The emblem of Skull and Bones is a skull with crossed [X] bones, over the number 322. ^[10]

     As we all know, Grand Father Prescott Bush, President’s George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and the latter’s 2004 Presidential opponent Senator John Kerry are all ‘Bonesmen’.  In 1873 The Iconoclast, a once-published student paper, advocated for the abolition of the society system. It opined: “Out of every class Skull and Bones takes its men...They have obtained control of Yale.  Its business is performed by them. Money paid to the college must pass into their hands, and be subject to their will....It is Yale College against Skull and Bones. We ask all men, as a question of right, which should be allowed to live?”  Founded at Wesleyan University in 1870 as a chapter of Skull and Bones, the Theta Nu Epsilon [ΘΝΕ, commonly known as T.N.E.] is a sophomore [2nd year] class society that accepts members regardless of their fraternity status.

    Again, our old mate Freemason Simon Cowell is fully aware of the “X” symbolic meaning.  The X represents many things, i.e. ‘Cross your heart hope to die’ – both ancient and modern day bodies are buried with the arms crossed across their chest.  The Masonic Order uses the X, not only for the revelatory 17th degree of Knights of the East and West, but Simon Cowell seems to be having a laugh with its symbolism, you may have seen them at the auditions for the X-Factor, thousands of contestants crossing their arms in the X shape, have unknowingly been hoodwinked into symbolising the Royal Arch’s Super-Excellent Master’s Degree, the first sign given is the crossing of the hands over the breast/chest.  This sign refers to the penalty assessed if any secrets learned are ever divulged.  Then, in the ritual ceremony for the Select Master Degree, the Second Sign is made by crossing the hands and arms just below the neck and dropping them downward quickly.  Again, this is a reminder of the disclosure penalty, which is to have the body drawn and quartered, with your heart ripped out and flung to the wild animals.

     In the ritual for the Intimate Secretary Degree, an X pattern is employed.  Richardson’s Monitor of Freemasonry reveals what happens in the Lodge: “The brethren now fall, each on his right knee, and they cross their hands and hold them up so that the thumb of the right hand touches the left temple and the left thumb the right temple”.  In ancient Egypt, the mark of X and the symbol of cross-bones in the symbol of an X was very prominent in religious contexts. You can find the X on the walls of a number of ancient Egyptians temples and pyramids... It’s the sign of Osiris, the great sun God... and the X meanings such as the cross swords, and many, many other Masonic linked connection to the X sign can be found in many symbolic references, - for more examples Google; Codex Magica.

     The Seven Society [founded 1905] is the most secretive of the University of Virginia’s secret societies.  Members are only revealed after their death, when a wreath of black magnolias in the shape of a ‘7’ is placed at the gravesite, the bell tower of the University Chapel chimes at seven-second intervals on the seventh dissonant chord when it is seven past the hour, and a notice is published in the University’s Alumni News, and often in the ‘Cavalier Daily’.

     The most visible tradition of the society is the painting of the logo of the society, the number 7 surrounded by the signs for alpha [A], omega [Ω] and infinity [∞], and sometimes several stars, upon many buildings around the grounds of the University.  There is no clear history of the founding of the society. There’s a legend that, of eight men who planned to meet for a card game, only seven showed up, and they formed the society.  Other histories claim that the misbehaviour of other secret societies, specifically the ‘Hot Feet’ [later the IMP Society], led University President Edwin A. Alderman to call both the ‘Hot Feet’ and the ‘Z Society’ into his office and suggest that a more ‘beneficial organisation’ was needed. ^[13]

     The only known method to successfully contact the Seven Society is to place a letter at the Thomas Jefferson statue inside the University’s historic Rotunda [accounts differ on the exact placement of the letter, either on the base or in the crook of the statue’s arm].  Like the Seven Society and IMP Society, the Z Society is known to paint their symbol around grounds. Superstition holds that if a woman walks directly over the huge letter ‘Z’ painted onto the steps of the footbridge near Ruffner Old Cabell Hall, she will become pregnant before she graduates. - The group contributes financially to the University, announcing donations with letters signed only with seven astronomical symbols in the order: Earth, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Neptune, Uranus, and Venus, - though Saturn’s not included?  The Society gives large monetary donations and scholarships to the University each year in quantities that include the number 7, e.g. $777 or $1,777. ^[13][14]                                                            

     The IMP Society is a secret society at the University of Virginia that is notable for combining philanthropy and public mischief.  Originally founded in 1902 as a society called the Hot Feet, the society was known primarily for its public ceremonies in which it crowned the ‘society’s-king’.  The Hot Feet were disbanded in 1908 under pressure from the University’s Administrative Council, who called the society “very detrimental to the University’s welfare” and banned it, along with all other organisations which promote disorder in the University.  University historian Virginius Dabney records the final activity of the society as the distribution of stuffed animal specimens from the natural history museum about grounds on Easter Sunday, and the assault of a student in his room. ^[15]

     In addition to philanthropy, IMP’s are known to march around the grounds carrying large three pronged forks, [any reference to the Hebrew letter shin [ש], or the Trident - a three-pronged spear, such as that of Neptune’s or the devils weapon/fork?], wearing horned hoods, and engaging in mischief and revelry.  Members of the IMP Society are often recognised by their ring with the face of a devil on it, - oh, so I can take it, as the ‘fork’ being in reference to the devil then?  In one 2004 incident, the group was forced to apologise after using gasoline to start a bonfire on the lawn during a - no doubt skin-clad, - night time ceremony.  The society publicly ‘taps’ its new members, and whilst the members of the group are known, many of their community service works are not widely publicised.  Like the Seven Society and Z Society, the IMP Society is known to paint their symbol around grounds.

     Notable IMP and Hot Feet members include James McConnell also member of the Omicron of Beta Theta Pi, fraternity, and who was the inspiration for Gutzon Borglum’s statue The Aviator, a bronzed statue of McConnell with wings, Borglum is also the sculpture of the famous president’s faces on Mount Rushmore.  Borglum was an active member of the Freemasons, raised in Howard Lodge No 35, New York City on the 10th June 1904 and serving as its Worshipful Master 1910-11.  In 1915, he was appointed Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of Denmark near the Grand Lodge of New York.  He received his Scottish Rite Degrees in the New York City Consistory on the 25th October 1907. ^[16]

     Borglum was also member of the Ku Klux Klan.  The museum at Mount Rushmore displays a letter to Borglum from D. C. Stephenson, the infamous Klan Grand Dragon who was later convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer, an American schoolteacher.  She was abducted and assaulted, and achieved national attention by naming D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, as her attacker before she died of poisoning. Her testimony led to his conviction, and to the decline of the 1920’s KKK in Indiana.

     The Raven’s Claw Society is said to be a very loyal and has been a part of Dickinson’s College History history for over 100 years.  Whilst the members of the group are known, the majority of their actions and traditions are concealed. The group prides itself in serving the Dickinson College and Carlisle, Pennsylvania communities through discrete service activities.  ^[16a]

     The Wheel and Chain is another Dickinson’s College Senior Honorary Society, but for women only.  Founded in 1924, members are elected in the spring of their junior year on the basis of participation in campus activities, service to the college and community, leadership skills and personal character. Membership is limited to ten senior women.  New members are inducted in a “Tapping Ceremony” which is held on the “Old Stone Steps of Old West” in April.  In May, each incoming Wheel and Chain class ceremoniously rings the bell in Denny Hall during Commencement ceremonies. Colloquially known as the “blue hats”, members are known to the public; however, the society’s activities remain secret. ^[16a]

     The Porcellian Club is a male-only final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C., and whose club house is termed the ‘Old Barn’.  The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name ‘The Argonauts’, or as in 1794, the year of ‘the roast pig dinner’ at which the club, known first as the ‘Pig Club’ was formally founded.  An urban myth mentions a belief that; “If members of the Porcellian do not earn their first million before they turn 40, the club will give it to them”. The club’s motto, ‘Dum vivimus vivamus’, “While we live, let’s live”- is literally ‘Epicurean’, and Epicureanism is a form of hedonism.  The club emblem is the pig, and some members sport golden pigs on watch-chains, cufflinks or neckties bearing pig’s-head emblems. ^[11]

     Chi Psi Fraternity, ΧΨ is a fraternity and secret society consisting of 32 chapters [known as Alphas], at American colleges and universities, and was founded on the 20th May 1841, by 10 students at Union College. - Sigma Chi [ΣΧ] is one of the largest and oldest college Greek-letter secret and social fraternities with 236 active chapters and 295,000 initiates.  Sigma Chi was founded on the 28th June 1855 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA, when members split from Delta Kappa Epsilon.   Psi Upsilon [ΨΥ, Psi U] is the fifth oldest college fraternity in the United States, founded at Union College in 1833.  It has chapters at colleges and universities throughout North America, for most of its history, Psi Upsilon, like most social fraternities, limited its membership to men only.  Today 2011 there are several co-educational Psi Upsilon chapters. [18]

     Beta Theta Pi [ΒΘΠ] is a social collegiate fraternity that was founded in 1839 also at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where it is part of the ‘Miami Triad’ which includes Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Chi. Beta, as it’s nicknamed, was the first college fraternity to be founded west of the Allegheny Mountains, and it has 120 active chapters and colonies in the United States and Canada.  Over 190,000 [2011] members have been initiated worldwide, with 133,000 of those presumed still living.

    Sigma Alpha Epsilon [ΣΑΕ, also SAE] is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity founded at the University of Alabama on the 9th March 1856, and is the largest college fraternity by total initiates, with more than 293,000 initiated members and more than 12,000 undergraduates at 300 chapters in 49 states and provinces at present.  The creed of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, ‘The True Gentlemen’, must be memorised and recited by all prospective members.  New members receive a copy of ‘The Phoenix’, the manual of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, for educational development. ^[19]

     Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity [ΠΚΑ, known as Pikes] is an international secret social Greek-letter college fraternity.  It was founded at the University of Virginia in the United States on Sunday evening, March 1, 1868.  There are chapters in nearly every state, and at many colleges and universities in the USA and Canada.  The chapter with the largest property in the country is the Iota Delta chapter which occupies 26 acres at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

     Lambda Chi Alpha [ΛΧΑ] is one of the largest men’s general fraternities in North America, by its own count, having initiated more than 270,000 members and held chapters at more than 300 universities.

     Theta Chi Fraternity currently has over 130 active chapters, as well as ‘7 colonies’ and interest groups across the USA and Canada and has initiated over 170,000 members since its founding.  It’s a member of the North-American Interfraternity Conference.  Theta Chi Fraternity has had many brothers in a variety of different fields: Armed Services, arts & entertainment, business & industry, engineering, government, higher education, insurance, journalism, judiciary & law, religion, research, service organisations and sports.

     Omicron Delta Kappa, or ΟΔΚ, also known as ‘The Circle’, or more commonly ‘ODK’, is a national leadership honour society, founded on the 3rd December 1914, at Washington & Lee University by 15 student and faculty leaders. Chapters, known as ‘Circles’, are located on over 300 college campuses.  Membership in the Omicron Delta Kappa Society is regarded as one of the ‘highest collegiate honours’ that can be awarded to an individual, along with Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa.  Some ‘Circles’ limit membership to less than the top one quarter of one percent of students on their respective campuses.

     The Honour Society of Phi Kappa Phi [or simply Phi Kappa Phi or ΦΚΦ] was founded in 1897, fourth after other similar academic societies: Phi Beta Kappa for the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Tau Beta Pi for Engineering, and Sigma Xi for Scientific Research.  Phi Kappa Phi claims to initiate approximately 30,000 new members annually, and to have a total of more than 1 million members since its creation, from over 300 college-based chapters in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.  The Society claims to have 100,000 current active members.

‘Mortar Board’ is a national honour society, the Cornell University Der Hexenkreis chapter is the oldest, and was founded in 1892 and predates the national society’s founding in 1918.  Though many of the traditions within the society are secret, the membership of each chapter is public, which differentiates Mortar Board, from many of the secret societies that were formed in the late 19th century.  Mortar Board has 226 chartered chapters nationwide and 19 alumni chapters, and since 1892, more than a quarter of a million college seniors have been initiated into the group.

     The Order of Omega was formed in 1959 and is an undergraduate Greek society recognising fraternity for men and women.  At present, the Order maintains approximately three hundred chapters at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

     Delta Kappa Epsilon [ΔΚΕ]; also pronounced D-K-E or Deke, is a fraternity founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 men of the sophomore class.  DKE has over 64 chapters and has initiated over 85,000 members across North America.  DKE is inextricably linked to the history of the United States of America, as its members have included five Presidents of the United States: Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. ^[20]

     Writer Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist and short story writer, who later added a “W” to make his name Hawthorne was an ancestor of John Hathorne, a judge during the ‘Salem Witch Trials’ which were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, USA, between February 1692 and May 1693.  Julian Hawthorne entered Harvard College in 1863, and wrote in his published Memoirs of his fraternal initiation: “I was initiated into a college secret society - a couple of hours of grotesque and good-humoured rodomontade [pretentious behaviour] and horseplay, in which I cooperated as in a kind of pleasant nightmare, confident, even when branded with a red-hot iron or doused head-over heels in boiling oil, that it would come out all right.  The neophyte [initiate] is effectively blindfolded during the proceedings, and at last, still sightless, I was led down flights of steps into a silent crypt, and helped into a coffin, where I was to stay until the Resurrection...Thus it was that just as my father passed from this earth, I was lying in a coffin during my initiation into Delta Kappa Epsilon.”  Meetings of active members are generally kept private and not to be discussed without the formal approval of the chapter as a whole.

     For the first time in more than 20 years, on the 7th January 2009, the outgoing President George W. Bush, alongside President-elect Barack Obama, hosted a historic reunion of former US Presidents at the White House.  George H.W. Bush became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity at Yale University in 1948, as did Bill Clinton at Georgetown University in 1968, and Jimmy Carter became an honorary member at Kansas State University in 1991. ^[21] So obviously, George W. Bush’s link with his father is that they were both ‘Bonesmen’.  Whereas not so obvious as a link, is that Barack Obama’s father, who shares the same name; Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was a member of Phi Beta Kappa secret society at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in which he joined in 1962.  In fact seventeen US Presidents and seven of the nine current US Supreme Court Justices have been Phi Beta Kappa members.                                                                                             

     Acacia Fraternity is originally based out of Masonic tradition.  At its founding in 1904, membership was originally restricted to those who had taken the Masonic obligations.  Within a year, four other Masonic clubs received Acacia charters, which led to a rapid expansion in the following years.  Today the bonds with the ‘Free and Accepted Masons’ vary amongst Acacia chapters, for some the tie is more distant and informal while others work closely with their local Masonic lodge[s].   Acacia distinguishes itself from other fraternities by being one of three inter-national fraternities that uses a word instead of Greek letters. ^[22]

     FarmHouse Fraternity International, Inc. is one of the other three, and is an all-male international social frat, founded at University of Missouri on the 15th April 1905.  Today FarmHouse has 34 chapters/colonies/interest groups in the United States and Canada.  Many of the rituals in the pledging and activation ceremony cite Christian Scripture.  The Founders had deep faith and sought to build their faith as they built other bonds.  The fraternity is certainly open to members of other faiths, but encourages a Masonic belief in “Something greater than oneself.” ^[23]                                                    

     Eating Clubs: In addition to these Greek fraternities and societies, - towards the end of the 19th century the eating clubs began to recruit new members as old ones left and also began to lease or buy permanent facilities.  The Ivy Club was the first of the permanent eating clubs.  Twenty eating clubs have existed since the Ivy Club opened in 1879, though there has never more than 18 at any one time.  At various points, many clubs defunct over the years, and joined into some of the present eating clubs, which include the Campus Club, Cannon Club, Elm Club, Key and Seal Club, Dial Lodge, Arch Club, Gateway Club, Court Club, Arbor Inn, and Prospect Club.  Dial, Elm, and Cannon Clubs merged to form DEC Club, which operated from 1990 to 1998.  Alumni of Dial, Elm, and Cannon Clubs planned to reopen the Cannon in 2010. 

     The eating clubs have attracted controversy, being viewed as elitist institutions, very much like the Bullingdon Club, in Oxford, England, and the Grillion Club, though not collegiate dining club, Grillion’s is a London dining club founded in 1812.  It was founded by the British diplomat Stratford Canning as a meeting place free from the violence of political controversy.  The club had no premises but met at Grillion’s Hotel on Albemarle Street, from which it took its name.  And my main reason for mentioning it, is because here too many leading statesmen belonged to the club, including prime ministers Gladstone, Salisbury, Balfour, Asquith, and Baldwin.  - A major part of the controversy was the difference in cost between joining an eating club and buying a university dining plan.  By 2006, the difference was over $2,000 for most clubs, and this difference was not covered by university financial aid, - meanwhile over here in the UK, one is still fretting over one’s tuition fees! ^[12]

     The Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret society that flourished in the U.S. during the American Civil War.  Though not anything to do with the colligate secret societies, this group sought to encourage the annexation of Mexico and the West Indies, which they believed would help the waning slave trade to once again flourish, - though when the Civil War started, the group switched its focus from colonialism to fervent support of the newly established Confederate government.  The Knights soon had thousands of followers, many of whom formed guerrilla armies and began raiding Union strongholds in the West.  In the Northern states, the mysterious order had an even bigger impact.   The group often formed renegade armies and bands of bushwhackers in order to forward their agenda by force.  In 1860, a group of the Knights made a failed attempt to invade Mexico. [Don’t worry the Amero is on it’s way]. During the war, they robbed stagecoaches and attempted a blockade of the harbour in San Francisco, and a group of them even managed to briefly take control of southern New Mexico. ^[24] 

 ^{Extract from Trapped in a Masonic World - http://www.trappedinamasonicworld.co.uk}

[1] "Kappa Sigma fraternity a href="http://www.uvureview.com/2010/07/19/kappa-sigma-fraternity-looks-to-expand-their-mark-on-campus/%3E">http://www.uvureview.com/2010/07/19/kappa-sigma-fraternity-looks-to...;.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegiate_secret_societies_in_North_A...

[3] "The College of William & Mary a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_College_of_William_&_Mary%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_College_of_William_&_Mary>;.

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[5]"Flat Hat Club - Citizendia." a href="http://www.citizendia.org/Flat_Hat_Club%3E">http://www.citizendia.org/Flat_Hat_Club>;.

[6] "Ivy League Schools a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League>;.

[7]Order, Kappa Alpha  "Greek Notes and Clippings". The Kappa Alpha Journal [Richmond.]

[8] ^abDelta Phi Fraternity Archived –www.webcitation.org

[9] "Delta Phi -a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search?search=Delta+Phi%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search?search=Delta+Phi>;.

[10] The New York Times, "Change In Skull And Bones. Famous Yale Society Doubles Size of Its House, published September 13, 1903.

[11] "Porcellian Club: http://www.aaymca.com/porcellian-club-aaymca-dot-com-20101001/

[12]"Eating club (Princeton University) a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_club_">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_club_(Princeton_University)>.

[13] Ladt, Carroll (1968-02-07). "More Than $50,000 Awarded: Seven's History Of Gifts, Pranks Recalled". Cavalier Daily.

[14] Bruce IV: 100. Note: Bruce is alone among early historians of the University in calling the Z Society the "Zeta."

[15] ^ Bruce, Philip Alexander (1922). History of the University of Virginia: The Lengthening Shadow of One Man. Macmillan

[16] Borglum biography inPBS's American Experience series

[16a] http://www.ask.com/wiki/Collegiate_secret_societies_in_North_Americ...

[17] "Gutzon Borglum a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutzon_Borglum%3E">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutzon_Borglum>;.

[18]Psi Upsilon Online – official home page

[19] "Sigma alpha epsilon a href="http://www.aolnews.com/tag/sigma-alpha-epsilon/%3E">http://www.aolnews.com/tag/sigma-alpha-epsilon/>;.

[20] A Century and a Half of DKE" The Illustrated History of Delta Kappa Epsilon. (Rho, 1957), Published by Heritage Publishers, Inc ISBN 0-929690-33-8

[21] "Phi Beta Kappa Society U.S. Presidents Share a Phi Beta a href="http://www.pbk.org/home/FocusNews.aspx?id=188%3E">http://www.pbk.org/home/FocusNews.aspx?id=188>;.

[22]"History of the Acacia Fraternity at Cornell". http://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/3349.

[23] FarmHouse Fraternity New Membership Education Manual, published by FarmHouse International Fraternity, Inc

[24] http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-secret-societies.php#comment-17174