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Legend says that on at least two occasions outsiders got in: once when firemen were admitted to put out a fire—after first being initiated into the society; another time when a Keys man, pretending to have lost his Bones key, got a campus policeman to unlock the door.
Around midnight. Bones men disperse quietly to their rooms, may not utter a word, even to their roommates, until next morning. Best-known tradition is that a Bones man must leave the room when an outsider mentions his society's name. Favorite gag in Harvard Hasty Pudding shows: someone says "Skull & Bones" and a tramp jumps up, stalks out.
Bones men are supposed to wear their pins at all times, hold them in their mouths while taking a shower. They are reputed to give each other philosophers' names as nicknames. When a Bones man marries, the 14 other Bones men in his class are ushers at his wedding. After the normal ceremony, they retire with the bride and groom into another room, there conduct a special Bones ceremony. They invariably give the bride a grandfather clock.
Dink Stover protested (before he was tapped) that Tap Day was "ridiculous rigmarole." Twenty years later Richard Storrs Childs, '32 (now publisher of Modern Age Books), also denounced "the Elks in our midst," shortly afterward accepted election to Keys. In 1933 the entire junior class revolted, stayed stubbornly in their rooms on Tap Day. The societies pursued them to their rooms, had no trouble filling their quotas. Next year, Tap Day returned to the campus. This year the Political Union held an unprecedented public debate, resolved (3840-17) that "the influence of the senior societies is not to the best interests of Yale."
Nevertheless when Tap Day dawned last week, a Dink Stoverish excitement seized Yale's campus. In the News, Chairman Kingman Brewster Jr. scolded: "Just as in the case of the more discreet years, the society question has managed to dislocate life around here to an insane degree. . . . Six o'clock will bring a general sigh of relief and a sudden realization that after all the day of judgment is still a matter for the Gods and not 90 Yale men."
Six o'clock brought a few surprises. No fewer than nine men turned down Bones (including Kingman Brewster, whom a Bones man found in the News office, and Football Captain-elect Harold Whiteman, who went Keys). Of those who accepted Bones, four were ringleaders in the Political Union. Last man tapped (highest honor) was Junior Prom Chairman Laurence Gotzian Tighe Jr., a functionary usually nabbed by Keys.
Otherwise, Tap Day ran true to form. Absent from Branford Court but eventually bagged by Bones in his room was another critic of the societies, Kingman Brewster's roommate, William Eldred Jackson, son of U. S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson. Bones also got its Armenian, Newsman Barooyr Zorthian.