But as long as initiations remain, all the fun of joining a Yale fraternity has not vanished. The initiation ceremonies are generally divided into two evenings, the "informals," and the "formals." Whereas these rituals vary from frat to frat, or rather from fraternity to fraternity (the word "frat" is considered at New Haven to have an unfortunate midwestern flavor), a pledge who enjoyed the following informal would not feel especially distinguished.

After waiting in line outside, one is blindfolded with a private toilet article. The pledge is then led in, is permitted to strip to his shorts, and is led to the "game room," where he kneels on ground saltines for an hour and a half. To prevent a sense of boredom from interfering with his agnoy during this period, a scratched record player is played, which repeats itself several times a minute. After this, the expectant brother passes down the stairs between a gauntlet of paddlers. He is then interrogated and brain-washed, after which he stands in a stairwell with his mouth open and receives thereabouts raw eggs which the brothers drop from several flights above.

What follows varies greatly as to duration and ingenuity, but one fraternity often finds it necessary to have a second night of informals. Most, however, simply have formals the following evening, during which the pledge is initiated into the mystical rights of the order. He is then a genuine Yale Man.

Nonetheless, the fraternities do not receive undivided support at Yale. The college newspaper, in such articles as Fraternities--A Fading Anachronism, and From Fraternities: Followers, Not Leaders, has frequently condemned them, urging that their buildings be turned over to the colleges. It charges that fraternities are expensive, immature, intellectually wasteful and that they illegally sell liquor to minors.

The new Yale magazine Criterion, a rather class-conscious journal, in a recent article says that the fraternities are concerned with "organized friendliness and constant drinking," and cries out that "the ideals of the wealthy--social hierarchy and distinctions, exclusiveness, clubbiness, concepts of what is shoe or weenie--being the ideals of the alumni, have come to dominate Yale."

Nowhere Else to Drink

While one is repelled by the charge of the Yale press that their fraternities rest on liquid foundations and by the sinister descriptions of their alumni, it is still necessary to ask why the institutions exist. The answer seems to be that in their college system there is nowhere else for the Yalies to drink and be social. As one New Haven collegian is quoted in his press as saying, "I joined a fraternity because I couldn't fit a bar in my room." Other reasons seem to be prestige, ambition and the desire subsequently join to a secret society.

The secret, or senior societies, unlike the frats, or rather fraternities, are an institution peculiar to Yale. Each is a group of fifteen people dedicated to privacy and generally either self-im-provement, literature, liquor, athletics, or discussion. While they are public to the extent that the names of new members appear in the paper every year, they are secret in that no one ever reveals what goes on inside. Some have no windows. Others have many exits. Many retain mystical ceremonies and most have strange customs. Skull and Bones, for example, has the tradition that every member must leave the room when an outsider says the name of their society. This has led to numerous jokes, such as the hiring of a gang of bums to get up and leave when the words "Skull and Bones" were mentioned in the Princeton triangle show.

Underground Societies

Besides the seven regular secret societies, some of which are over a century old, there are now numerous underground ones. Fraternity membership is not actually necessary for election to a secret society, but potential members are well investigated. Even the deans and faculty members join in, and make recommendations to the societies.

The future of the societies is far more secure than that of the fraternities. Whereas some fraternities contribute to their national chapters and others are financially dependent on them, six of the nine fraternities are operating in the red. The established senior societies, on the other hand, are extremely well-endowed, and the loyalty and resources of their alumni make them influential with the administration. and no need for doing so.

Ironically, it is the most repellent qualities of the Clubs that give the system this advantage. Their snobbishness, their secrecy, their uncreativity, their preoccupation with an isolated social world all tend to dissuade most undergraduates from any any wish to join. Dean Bender, in the same breath as he criticizes the Clubs for "narrowness," feverently hopes "that the Clubs never start getting democratic." If the Clubs were to elect people on a basis of creative merit, he points out, then undergraduates might really begin to care about joining. The Clubs would become a generally recognized elite, and the punching season would become a bitter college-wide scramble. There seems little chance, however, that the Clubs will take a turn in this direction.

Despite the dim view that University Hall may take of the Clubs, there is little likelihood that Harvard will ever officially abolish them. In the first place, the administration takes quite seriously Harvard's tradition of giving students free reign until they interfere with others.

Secondly, there is a strong suspicion that the Clubs could never, realistically, be destroyed. Greek letter fraternities were outlawed 100 years ago, and the present Clubs simply sprang up in their place. And of course there is the crass but major consideration that much of the Universitiy's financial support comes from wealthy Club alumni who might be reluctant to feed the hand that bites them.

By all appearances, the Clubs will last as long as they can support themselves. Already they have survived a good many hard knocks from the outside: the one-two punch of the 1929 Depression and the founding of the House system, for instance, before which time members usually ate three meals a day in the Club, enjoyed special benefits such as theatre ticket services and private Club railway cars for the Yale football game and crew race, and generally ran up bills of $150 to $200 a month.