Campus “Leadership” Societies and Women
“In a series of events that made national headlines, the [Yale Secret Society Skull and] Bones class of 1991 eventually tapped female juniors. […]
In 1991, after approximately eight hundred living members voted by mail, Bones narrowly endorsed the admission of women. But in early September, the day before the women were to be initiated, a faction led by patriarch William F. Buckley (1950) obtained from New Haven Superior Court Judge Donald Celotto a court order that temporarily blocked the 1991 club from initiating the nine men and six women it had tapped; as a result the ceremony was canceled. …. Bones held a second vote on October 23. More than 425 members came to the tomb and hundreds more voted by proxy; the votes tallied 368 to 320 in favor that women should be elected to the society. The women were initiated on Sunday, October 27.
Senators David Boren and John Kerry later disclosed that they voted for the admittance of women. George Bush and George W. Bush have never confessed how they voted, though George W. might have provided a clue when in 1994 he told PBS producer Lynn Novick, a woman who graduated from Yale in 1983, that Yale “went downhill since they admitted women.” During his 1988 presidential campaign, George Bush admitted he was not necessarily included to let women into the society.”
— From Secrets of the Tomb, pp. 157-158.
According to the New York Times, Michigamua admitted its first women in 1999 to be members of the “Pride” of 2000. (See Robyn Meredith, “Michigan Students Protest Campus Club’s Indian Relics,” New York Times 13 Feburary 2000, Sec. 1, p. 18) (Reprint available here)