Editing Skull and Bones (section)

==Notable members==
{{main|List of Skull and Bones members}}
[[File:Skull and Bones Class of 1920.jpg|thumb|Yearbook listing of Skull and Bones members for 1920, including [[Briton Hadden]] and [[Henry Luce]], who co-founded ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine in 1923]]
Skull and Bones' membership developed a reputation in association with the "[[power elite]]".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/skull-and-bones/ |work=CBS News |title=Skull And Bones: Secret Yale Society Includes America's Power Elite |author=Leung, Rebecca |date=June 13, 2004 |access-date=March 9, 2011}}</ref> Regarding the qualifications for membership, [[Lanny Davis]] wrote in the 1968 Yale yearbook:
{{Blockquote|If the society had a good year, this is what the "ideal" group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the ''[[Yale Daily News]]''; a conspicuous [[Political radicalism|radical]]; a [[The Whiffenpoofs|Whiffenpoof]]; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies' man with two motorcycles; an ex-serviceman; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever{{nbsp}}...|[[Lanny Davis]], quoted by [[Alexandra Robbins]]|source="[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/george-w-knight-of-eulogia/304686/?single_page=true George W., Knight of Eulogia]"}}

Like other Yale senior societies, Skull and Bones's membership was almost exclusively limited to [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestants|white Protestant]] men for much of its history. While Yale had exclusionary policies directed at particular ethnic and religious groups, the senior societies were even more exclusionary.<ref name="Club" /><ref name="chosen" /> While some [[American Catholics|Catholics]] were able to join such groups, [[American Jews|Jews]] were more often not.<ref name="chosen">{{cite book | title=The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton | url=https://archive.org/details/chosen00jero_0 | url-access=registration | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | author=Karabel, Jerome | year=2005 | location=Boston | pages=[https://archive.org/details/chosen00jero_0/page/n62 53]–36}}</ref> Some of these excluded groups eventually entered Skull and Bones using sports, through the society's practice of tapping standout athletes. Star football players tapped for Skull and Bones included the first Jewish player ([[Al Hessberg]], class of 1938) and [[African-American]] player ([[Levi Jackson]], class of 1950), although Jackson declined the tap, instead electing to join [[Berzelius (secret society)|Berzelius]].<ref name="Club">{{cite book | title=Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale | publisher=Yale University Press | author=Oren, Dan A. | year=1985 | location=New Haven | pages=[https://archive.org/details/joiningclubhist00oren/page/n106 87]–88 | isbn=0-300-03330-3 | url=https://archive.org/details/joiningclubhist00oren | url-access=registration }}</ref>

Judith Ann Schiff, Chief Research Archivist at the [[Yale University Library]], has written: "The names of its members weren't kept secret{{nsmdns}}that was an innovation of the 1970s{{nsmdns}}but its meetings and practices were."<ref>[http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_09/old_yale.html Yalealumnimagazine.com] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050404050959/http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_09/old_yale.html |date=April 4, 2005 }}</ref> While resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these sources, in 1985, [[Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt]] provided [[Antony C. Sutton]] with rosters and records that had belonged to her father, a member of the organization. This membership information was kept privately for over fifteen{{nbsp}}years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. He wrote a book on the group, ''America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones''. The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book ''Fleshing out Skull and Bones'', a compilation edited by Kris Millegan and published in 2003.

Among prominent alumni are former presidents [[William Howard Taft]] (a founder's son), [[George H. W. Bush]], and [[George W. Bush]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |date=2010-01-05 |title=Skull linked to secret Yale society to be sold |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34709352 |access-date=2023-07-01 |website=NBC News |language=en}}</ref> In the [[2004 U.S. Presidential election]], both the Democratic and Republican nominees were members of Skull and Bones. When asked what it meant that he and [[George W. Bush]] were both Bonesmen, former presidential candidate [[John Kerry]] said, "Not much, because it's a secret."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48358-2004Apr3?language=printer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180812112001/https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48358-2004Apr3/?language=printer |url-status=dead |archive-date=August 12, 2018 |title=Bush, Kerry Share Tippy-Top Secret |author=Oldenburg, Don |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=April 4, 2004 |access-date=November 5, 2011}}</ref><ref>''[[Meet the Press]]''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwJDs1cg9Eo YouTube]</ref>

Members are assigned nicknames. Examples include "Long Devil", the tallest member, "Boaz", a varsity football captain, and "Sherrife", the prince of the future. Many of the chosen names are drawn from literature (e.g., "[[Prince Hamlet|Hamlet]]", "[[Uncle Remus]]") religion, and myth. The banker [[Lewis A. Lapham|Lewis Lapham]] passed on his nickname, "[[Sancho Panza]]", to the political adviser [[Tex McCrary]]. [[Averell Harriman]] was "[[Thor]]", [[Henry Luce]] was "[[Baal]]", [[McGeorge Bundy]] was "[[Odin]]", and [[George H. W. Bush]] was "[[Magog (Bible)|Magog]]".<ref name="atlantic-robbins" />