The Scroll and Key Society is a secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1842, it is one of the oldest Yale secret societies and is reputedly the wealthiest. Each spring the society admits 15 rising seniors to participate in its activities and carry on its traditions.
History
Scroll and Key was established in 1841 by twelve members of the class of 1842 after dissatisfaction over elections to Skull and Bones Society. Its founders included John Addison Porter, Leonard Case Jr., Theodore Runyon, and William L. Kingsley. After ten years, the number of members was expanded to fifteen.
Scroll and Key was incorporatored as the Kingsley Trust Association, with the following incorporators: Lebbeus C. Chapin, Calvin G. Child, Josiah W. Harmer, George C. Jackson, William Kingsley, Charlton Thomas Lewis, Samuel C. Perkins, John Addison Porter, Homer B. Sprague, and Enos N. Taft.
Traditions
At the close of Thursday and Sunday sessions, members are known to sing the "Troubadour" song on the front steps of the Society's hall, a remnant of the tradition of public singing at Yale. The song (written in the 1820s by Thomas Haynes Bayly) was recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford on his 1956 album, This Lusty Land, as "Gaily the Troubador".
In keeping with the practice of adopting secret letters or symbols such as Skull and Bones' "322," Manuscript Society|Manuscript Society's "344," and The Pundits' "T.B.I.Y.T.B," Scroll and Key is known to use the letters "C.S.P. and C.C.J." Members of the society sign letters to each other "YiT", as opposed to Skull and Bones' "yours in 322". A later expansion was completed in 1901. Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of Keys' building in his 1999 history of Yale's campus, relating the then-notable cost overruns associated with the Keys structure and its aesthetic significance within the campus landscape. Pinnell's history shares the fact that the land was purchased from another Yale secret society, Berzelius (at that time, a Sheffield Scientific School society).
Regarding the tomb's distinctive appearance, Pinnell noted that "19th-century artists' studios commonly had exotic orientalia lying about to suggest that the painter was sophisticated, well traveled, and in touch with mysterious powers; Hunt's Scroll and Key is one instance in which the trope got turned into a building." Later, undergraduates described the building as a "striped zebra Billiard Hall" in a supplement to a Yale yearbook. More recently, it has been described by an undergraduate publication as being "the nicest building in all of New Haven".
Membership
Scroll and Key taps annually a delegation of fifteen students in the junior class to serve the following year. Membership is offered to a diverse group of highly accomplished juniors, specifically those who have "achieved in any field, academic, extra-curricular, or personal".
Mark Twain was an honorary member, under the auspices of Joseph Twichell, Yale College Class of 1859.
Community engagement
Scroll and Key has made significant donations to Yale and the broader New Haven community.
The Kingsley Trust Association funds the John Addison Porter Prize, awarded annually since 1872. This prize is "given for a written work of scholarship in any field in which it is possible, through original effort, to gather and relate facts and/or principles and to make the product of general human interest." In 1917, Keys established the endowment for the Yale University Press, which has funded the publication of The Yale Shakespeare and sponsored the Yale Series of Younger Poets.
In 2026, members established the Keys New Haven Engagement Endowment Fund to support sustained service initiatives and engagement with the broader New Haven community.
Notable members
See also
- Collegiate secret societies in North America