Skull-Bones Club Finally Will Admit Women

Twenty-two years after Yale University first admitted women, Skull and Bones--its most prestigious senior society--has decided to do the same.

Alumni members of the 159-year-old private club voted late Thursday to accept women, turning aside a last-ditch effort by a group of die-hard traditionalists to maintain an all-male group.

More than 100 Bonesmen from around the country returned to their old clubhouse, known as the “Tomb,” for a debate and vote on the issue. The counting of ballots, which included hundreds of proxies, was not completed until Friday morning.

The vote cleared the way for the initiation Sunday of six women and nine men.

The women were about to be initiated last month when a group of Bonesmen, including conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr., obtained a court order blocking the induction.

Club directors agreed to hold off admitting women until a special meeting could be held to take a second vote on the issue. Proxy ballots were mailed to members.

The directors of Skull and Bones voted in May to welcome Yale women into the private club, whose ranks include President Bush, a 1948 graduate. In the 1988 presidential campaign, Bush conceded that he had qualms about letting women into the society.

Members ratified the decision on a 368-320 vote.

But opponents, led by P. Jay Fetner, a 1965 graduate from Washington, D.C., accused the board of fraudulent voting. They also questioned the wisdom of letting women into their bastion of male bonding.

Members of Wolf’s Head, the only other senior society at Yale that does not admit women, will soon vote on whether to break with 108 years of tradition and let women join.

Over the years, Skull and Bones has been the most fanatical of the senior societies in guarding its privacy and letting only members share in the knowledge of its rituals.

But the tradition of secrecy was breached during this year’s sometimes ill-tempered debate over changing the club’s membership rules.

In April, the club’s board changed the locks on the Tomb and suspended operations after the 15 Bonesmen from the class of 1991 defied their elders by deciding on their own to tap women.

The board announced early this year that it wanted to resolve the issue, but the 1991 graduates accused the directors of foot-dragging.