Skull and Bones and Equity and Inclusion

One evening in 2019, in a windowless building known as the “tomb” in the center of Yale’s campus, the members of Skull and Bones snapped. There they were, having been granted membership to the most elite secret society at one of the most elite universities in the world—part of a rare group that for generations included individuals from the most powerful families on the planet. Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Buckleys have all been in Skull and Bones. Three Bonesmen would go on to become president of the United States. Their traditions (including oaths of secrecy upon admission) and antics (stealing the gravestone of Yale’s founder), and the rumors about them (that the Bones tomb contains several human skulls), are legendary—and an intense source of campus gossip.

But there in the tomb, surrounded by oil portraits of former Bonesmen—all white, all chosen by the society’s alumni board—the current members felt overcome not by the achievements of those who had come before them, or by the possibilities that lay ahead, but instead by the organization’s long history of exclusion. So the students did what they felt had to be done: They pulled the portraits down, and replaced them with homemade signs criticizing the secret society’s record of keeping people of color out of its ranks. “Portraits is a relatively straightforward and easy ask,” one member who participated in the redecoration told me.“The way a space looks can have a large impact on a person’s