Scroll and Key
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[edit] History
The society, according to the Times, was organized by 12 members of the Yale Class of 1842, including those mentioned above with Theodore Runyon, Issac Hiester and Leonard Case. (William Kingsley, the namesake of the alumni organization, the Kingsley Trust Association (K.T.A.), was a member of the Class of 1843.) The thirteen were "dissatisfied with the elections to Skull and Bones".[2] For ten years, the society tapped annually twelve members; thereafter, "Keys", as the group is known colloquially, thought best to follow the tradition of fifteen (and sometimes, more) undergraduate members established by "Bones" for a Yale senior or secret society delegation or cohort.[3]
Members meet Thursday and Sunday nights during their senior year in the Society's ornate, windowless "tomb"[1], distinguished by alternating dark and light bands of stone, pattern-pierced stone window screens and ornate column capitals at the entrance. Late at night traditionally after their weekly meetings, "Keysmen" gather on their front steps to serenade College Street with their "Troubador" song. "Keys" co-educated in 1989.
Tax records show an endowment worth several million dollars more than that of its elder counterpart, Skull and Bones.[2] In addition to financing its own activities, "Keys", as it is known collquially, has made numerous donations to Yale over the years: the John Addison Porter Prize, awarded annually by Yale since 1872, and in 1917 an endowment for the Yale University Press which has funded the publication of The Yale Shakespeare and other scholarly works. George Parmly Day founded the Yale University Press.
Many "Keysmen" have been and would be considered members of the power elite.
[edit] Architecture
- Richard Morris Hunt. (1869-70, Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts.) Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of Keys' building in his 1999 history of Yale's campus, relating the then-notable cost overruns associated with the Keys structure and its aesthetic significance within the campus landscape. Pinnell's history shares the fact that the land was purchased from another secret society, Berzelius.
Regarding its distinctive appearance, Pinnell noted that "19th century artists' studios commonly had exotic orientalia lying about to suggest that the painter was sophisticated, well traveled, and in touch with mysterious powers; Hunt's Scroll and Key is one instance in which the trope got turned into a building." (p.125, "Yale University" 1999 Princeton Architectural Press ISBN 1568981678 [[3]].) Additional data at [4]
[edit] Notable members
[edit] Diplomacy, national security
- Dean Acheson (1915) - 51st Secretary of State
- C.Tracy Barnes (1932) - Central Intelligence Agency operative responsible for Bay of Pigs invasion
- Cord Meyer, Jr. (1943) - United World Federalists
- Frank Polk (1894) - Davis Polk & Wardwell; (acting) Secretary of State who managed conclusion to World War I
- Theodore Runyon (1842) Envoy, then Ambassador, Germany; Battle of Bull Run
- Sargent Shriver (1938) - Peace Corps; Special Olympics
- Cy Vance (1939) - 57th Secretary of State; Secretary of the Army
[edit] Business and industry
- Bart Giamatti (1960) - Commissioner of Major League Baseball; 16th President, Yale University
- Paul Mellon (1929) - philanthropist
- Robert Shriver - Baltimore Orioles
- John Hay Whitney (1926) - New York Herald Tribune; J.H. Whitney & Co.; Ambassador to the Court of St. James's
[edit] Scholars, writers and journalists
- George Parmly Day (1897) - Yale University Press
- Ray Lorenzo Heffner (1945) - 13th President, Brown University
- William Kingsley (1843) - Yale Review
- Maynard Mack (1932) - Yale faculty, namesake of distinguished-speaker series of Yale's Elizabethan Club
- Stone Phillips (1977) - Dateline NBC
- Wayne Riley (1981) - Meharry Medical College
- Alexandra Robbins (1998) - Secrets of the Tomb
- Gideon Rose (1987) - Foreign Affairs
- Calvin Trillin (1957) - humorist
- Stephen Umin (1959) - Rhodes Scholar; law clerk, Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart
- Fareed Zakaria (1986) - Newsweek International
[edit] Politics
- John Lindsay (1944) - Mayor, New York City; Representative, New York's 17th District
- Robert Wagner (1933) - Mayor, New York City; Envoy to the Vatican; Ambassador to Spain
[edit] The judiciary
- George Shiras Jr. (1853) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice
[edit] The sciences
- Harvey Cushing (1891) - neurosurgeon considered father of brain surgery
- John Enders (1919) - shared 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Dickinson W. Richards (1917) - 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Benjamin Spock (1925) - Baby & Child Care
[edit] Arts and architecture
- George Roy Hill (1943) - 1974 Academy Award for Directing, The Sting
- Austin Pendleton (1961) - Circle Repertory Company; Drama Desk Award
- Cole Porter (1913) - composer and songwriter; original Whiffenpoofs
- James Gamble Rogers - (1889) collegiate Gothic architecture, favored architect of Edward Harkness
- Garry Trudeau (1970) - Doonesbury
[edit] "It is said...."
- Membership has been defined by two differing demographics: on the one hand the leading squash, crew or hockey athletes, architects, scientists, and singers among the junior class, and descendents of the Mayflower families or Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor's "400"
