Phi Betu Kappa elected eight new Juniors to membership Monday. The Harvard chapter of the national honor society has been doing this for IGS consecutive years longer than any other chapter in any other college.

High level scholastic achievement is prerequisite to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, but it takes more than ability to grind out A's like an automatic bottling machine to get the privilege of wearing a Phi Beta Kappa Key.

Three considerations go into electing an undergraduate to Phi Beta Kappa. First, he must have a high scholastic standing. Second, his intellectual accomplishments and general promise are evaluated by the candidate's tutor. Third, his overall achievement in his undergraduate days in the line of extra-curricular activities as well as in the purely academic field is weighed by a committee composed of faculty members, graduate, and undergraduate Phi Beta Kappas.

Of the three, an excellent scholastic record bears the most weight, since Phi Beta Kappa is first and foremost "recognition of intellectual capacities well employed, especially in the acquiring of an education in the liberal arts and sciences." A student has to be among the top 12 academically, in his class before Phi Beta Kappa will even deign to consider him for election in the Junior year.

The entire undergraduate membership led by an executive board, manned this year by John M. Teem '50, First Marshal, Roy F. Gootenberg '49, Secretary, and Antonic G. Haas '44, Second Marshal and graduate members including Dean Bender '27 and Assistant Dean Judson T. Shaplin '42 begin screening the elite 12 at the end of their fifth term.

"Know Tutor"

Embarrassingly often tutors have had to report that they have known their tutees about as long as it takes to scribble a signature on a study card. Men who think they have a chance to make Phi Beta Kappa "would be wise to get to know their tutors as well as possible," First Marshal Teem suggests.

If more than one undergraduate from a single academic department of the University is being considered for membership, the department is asked to rank its candidates.

Next November, Phi Beta Kappa will add an additional 16 from the senior class to its roster. In the week before each commencement, the top ten percent of the graduating class are admitted to Phi Beta Kappa.

Back in 1781

Today in 1949, Phi Beta Kappa elects about 100 men to its ranks from each class. When the Alpha Chapter of Massachusetts began at the University of Cambridge in 1781 it had six members and none of the six claimed any particular fame as scholars. Phi Beta Kappa was, as a matter of fact, the first of the social Greek letter organizations which thrive on most college campuses in the United States today.

The first Phi Beta Kappa Society came into existence December 5, 1776 at William and Mary in Virginia. It introduced all the ritual and mysticism employed by contemporary fraternities--an oath of secrecy, a badge, mottoes in Greek and Latin, a code of laws, an elaborate form of initiation, a seal, and a special hand-clasp.

Meetings, however, were devoted to debates and the reading of papers instead of to boisterous intake of alcohol. In that respect Phi Beta Kappa at its inception distinguished itself from the run of fraternities.

Cornwallis

William and Mary's chapter didn't last long, though. It dissolved with the approach of Cornwallis' British troops after four years and 67 meetings. But one Elisha Parmele, a Harvard graduate, received characters for branch chapters at Yale and Harvard before the original Phi Bota Kappa went into extinction.