Oberlin College has banned secret societies continuously since 1847
While Yale's Skull and Bones became perhaps the most famous secret student society in America, some campuses refused to allow any. Oberlin College has prohibited them from 1847 to the present, Princeton has barred them since the early twentieth century, and cadets at the Virginia Military Institute may not join one.
Scholars disagree on exactly what qualifies. Definitions usually weigh how strongly a group insists on secrecy, whether it guards and passes on hidden knowledge, whether members deny belonging, and whether it uses private rites. Groups like spy agencies or guerrilla movements are generally excluded because they keep a public presence. Anthropologists link the tradition to the Männerbund, the all-male warrior society of pre-modern cultures.
Historian Richard Spence of the University of Idaho offers a three-part test: the group's existence is usually known but some beliefs or practices require an oath to learn; it promises members superior status or knowledge; and membership is restricted by race, sex, religion or invitation. He adds a category of elite secret societies and notes a common tendency toward factional squabbling and claims of origins older than any record supports. His definition covers Freemasons and Rosicrucians but also the Mafia, the Order of Assassins, Thelema and political movements such as the Black Hand. Historian Jasper Ridley called Freemasonry the world's most powerful secret society.
British universities have their own long tradition: the Pitt Club at Cambridge, the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, the Kate Kennedy Club at St Andrews and the Cambridge Apostles, which began as an essay and debating society. France's Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers has Vandermonde, and in Canada there are Episkopon at Trinity College, Toronto, and a Vancouver group named for the Egyptian god Thoth at UBC.
Suspicion has followed such groups. The National Christian Association campaigned against them from 1868 to 1983. Because some pursue political ends, Italy and Poland ban secret political organisations in their constitutions. Critics have even labelled the Catholic organisation Opus Dei a secret society, with the Jesuit Wladimir Ledóchowski likening it to a Catholic form of Freemasonry.
Source: Secret society
