Yale’s social pyramid excluded outsiders so harshly it made classmates weep

Evidence

But in fact Yale was still a tightly sealed society. Of the 351 members of the class of 1909 who entered Yale with Moses in September 1905, most had graduated from the “right” Episcopalian private preparatory schools—thirty-three from Andover, for example, twenty-three from Hotchkiss and seventeen from St. Paul’s. Moreover, as one of Moses’ classmates recalls, “as soon as you got to Yale, you found out that its structure was a social pyramid,” its base the select Sophomore Societies, its next step the even more select Junior Fraternities, its apex the three Senior Societies—Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key and Wolf’s Head. Sixty years later, surviving members of the class of 1909 could still remember watching classmates burst into tears on Tap Day when they realized that they were not to be selected for a Senior Society. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 163

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Excluded Yale strivers found relief in Oxford’s inherited, effortless elitism — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 213; Youth and Jewishness made Moses a lonely social outcast at Yale — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 165

Broader Connections

• Youth and Jewishness made Moses a lonely social outcast at Yale #exemplifies (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 165
• Excluded Yale strivers found relief in Oxford’s inherited, effortless elitism #expands (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 213