Slate editor Jake Weisberg '86 gives the inside perspective on Yalie vs. Yalie, and it's not all about Skull and Bones:
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/current/presidents.html(blue sidebar on right)
Yale can claim both of this year's presidential nominees. But should it do so proudly? The two candidates have something curious in common beside an Old Blue pedigree: that their bright college years were largely wasted on them. Yale was wasted on John Kerry '66 because he was too preoccupied with getting ahead. It was wasted on George W. Bush '68 because he was so busy falling down....
For someone as eager to secure a position in the Eastern establishment as Kerry was, getting tapped for Skull and Bones was a culminating accomplishment. This may explain why he continues to take that silly institution so seriously, treating its threadbare "secrets" with greater reverence than Senate intelligence briefings....
But Bush never felt he belonged at Yale. Arriving at a moment when what Nicholas Lemann calls the "episcopacy" was giving way to a meritocracy, he found that simply doing the done thing was no longer sufficient. A C student (and another poli sci major), Bush later said he "didn't learn a damn thing" at Yale. The reason was that he didn't try. One year, the star of the football team spotted him in the back row during shopping period. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill '69 shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!"...
Skull and Bones meant a great deal to 41, but as the Schwiezers report, 43 would have preferred the more party-oriented Scroll and Key (or, as other sources say, the even less formal "Gin and Tonic" club). He joined Bones, where no alcohol was served, only under family pressure. Bush held a grudge against Yale that was finally buried only when he returned in 2001 to claim an honorary degree and give a commencement speech reminiscing about how little he studied.Too bad Jake didn't tell us a little more about the time he himself was "tapped" for membership in Skull and Bones -- and refused, an event slightly more common than this week's Venus transit, or a Red Sox World Series win. He is said to have razzed senior Bonesmen, including, I believe, Kerry himself, over Bones' refusal at the time to "tap" women. Hence, the "silly institution" quote above.
That would have opened the door to a discussion of the internal controversy within S&B over the tapping of women, which happened only in the '90s: unsurprisingly, Kerry was prominent among those who favored it, while every single Bush in S&B was bitterly opposed.
KamaAina '85
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