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THE NUMBER 322 REFERS TO THE FOUNDING DATE OF "SKULL & BONES" AND THE ONE INDICATES THE SENIORITY OF 'THE ORDER'
Posted By: Patriotlad [Send E-Mail]
Date: Monday, 4-Feb-2013 12:10:59
THE SECRETIVE SOCIETY KNOWN AS SKULL & BONES WAS FOUNDED BY TWO MEN OF YALE COLLEGE IN 1832.
As students, the two founders had spent some considerable time in Germany [ then a collection of principalities and city states ] returning at about the end of their Junior year.
There they had encountered a university group known as "The Brotherhood Of Death" in the English translation.
Over the next decades, as interest in fraternal organizations ramped-up in the colleges of the United States, Yale men also created both new senior societies like Skull & Bones, and other fraternities.
Eventually the new senior groups began to acquire their own followings, and buildings -- such as Scroll & Key, Berzelius, Wolf's Head and Saint Anthony of Egypt, also known as St. Anthony Hall. Skull & Bones remains 'the elder' of these brothers, athough it has mostly always been a meeting place.
St. Anthony built for itself both meeting chambers and a kitchen, and an attached wing of student rooms: these were eventually sold to Yale and converted into classrooms. The fraternal nature of St. Anthony was modified to include all three grades of membership and so it is not, now, a seniors-only society. The rapid growth of these fraternities and senior societies, was a response to the expansion of Yale College in the late 1800s, and the inadequacies of boarding houses in New Haven at that time.
The special number of 3-2-2, as it was once written, stands solely for '32, number 2, refering to the German university Brotherhood.
Fifteen men are 'tapped' for membership, every year in the spring of their enrollment as Juniors: the 'tap' is said to be offered at about 8:00 PM on "Tap Night" and the prospective member was and is required to give an almost immediate reply, a yea or nay. By tradition, all of the senior societies at Yale observe the rituals of Tap Night, and it is said that very few Juniors have ever declined membership in Skull & Bones.
The time of the power failure at the Superdome in New Orleans was 13:22, which probably references the Order of Skull & Bones as being the first of its kind, in this country, and quite probably the richest.