Vanity Fair’s Schools for Scandal brings together the magazine’s finest reporting on the scandals that have swept our nation’s most elite campuses over the past twenty-five years—all collected in one definitive, “fascinating, eye-opening” ( Booklist ) volume edited by Graydon Carter and introduced by Cullen Murphy. Many of us have long suspected an American obsession with status. Now Graydon Carter has collected extraordinary articles from Vanity Fair that show the lengths we will go to achieve it, preserve it, or destroy it—from the enduring, shadowy influence of Yale’s secret societies to the infamous “senior salute” at St. Paul’s School; from the false accusations in the Duke lacrosse team’s infamous rape case to the (mis)reportage of a sexual assault at the University of Virginia; from a deadly extreme-sport episode at Oxford to the Keystone Kop theft of a college’s rare books to the allegations of fraud by the now-shuttered Trump University. Vanity Fair’s Schools for Scandal brings focus to the perils facing American education today and how the life of the mind, and the significance of the institutions meant to foster it, has been negatively impacted by the partisan politics of privatization, tensions over so-called political correctness, the fraught dynamic of the teacher-student relationship, and what happens when visions for a bold future collide with the desire to maintain hidebound (or venerable) traditions. With an array of Vanity Fair ’s signature writers—including Buzz Bissinger, William D. Cohan, Sarah Ellison, Evgenia Peretz, Todd S. Purdum, and Sam Tanenhaus, among others— Vanity Fair’s Schools for Scandal presents a compelling if troubling account of the state of elite education today, and the evolving social, sexual, racial, and economic forces that have shaped it. Graydon Carter has been the editor of Vanity Fair since 1992. Vanity Fair’s Schools For Scandal YALE’S SKULL AND BONES CLUB “POWERFUL SECRETS” By Alexandra Robbins JULY 2004 There are certain sure signs of spring at Yale. Dogwood trees blossom across New Haven. The daffodils on Old Campus bloom. Freshmen turn their speakers to face the courtyard and blast music while they kick Hacky Sacks and throw Frisbees on the green. And a certain group of upperclassmen participate in a quiet but frenzied one-night ritual known simply as Tap Night. Each of Yale’s six major secret societies elects its members on the same night in April of the prospective members’ junior year. In April of 1965 and 1967, respectively, John F. Kerry and George W. Bush received the same fateful call to the same mysterious organization: the undergraduate club perhaps mythologized more than any other by the outside world, Skull and Bones. It’s no secret that Skull and Bones, which elects 15 Yale juniors annually to meet in a crypt-like headquarters called “the Tomb,” is no mere college club. The fact that the 2004 presidential election is a Bones-versus-Bones ballot raises eyebrows not just because it brings to light that, despite their ideological differences, both candidates come from the same echelon of American society but also because it’s a bit astounding that a club with only about 800 living members has seen so many of them reach prominence. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day speculating about the group that has been called everything from “an international mafia” to “the Brotherhood of Death.” They are not completely wrong. Skull and Bones really is one of the most powerful and successful alumni networks in America. Alumni, or “patriarchs,” return often to the Tomb, where connections are made and favors granted. Some classes have “Pat Night,” an event where patriarchs mingle with “knights” (undergraduate members) and circulate job offers. Among its roster, Bones counts three U.S. presidents, two Supreme Court chief justices, and scores of Cabinet members, senators, and congressmen. Bonesman president William Howard Taft named two fellow Bonesmen to his nine-man Cabinet. More good news for the fanatics: there is a strong link between Bones and the C.I.A. In Bush and Kerry’s day, the agency was known as an “employer of last resort,” says a Bonesman from the 1960s, since so many Bonesmen went on to join. “If you couldn’t get a job elsewhere, you could go there if you wanted to.” Because of the high numbers of Bonesmen in the C.I.A. and in the Time Inc. empire (Time magazine co-founders Henry Luce and Briton Hadden were members), these organizations were “explicitly willing to take” Bonesmen seeking employment. Many Bonesmen who had become C.I.A. operatives and government officials returned to the Tomb and discussed highly classified matters, as National-Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy reportedly did. “The things that fascinated me at Pat gatherings were the level of penetration . . . and how open they were about talking in the Tomb,” says a Bonesman who graduated in the 1980s. “They talked about foreign operations at the