The number "322" appears in Skull and Bones' insignia and is widely reported to be significant as the year of Greek orator Demosthenes' death. Skull and Bones "taps" those that it views as campus leaders and other notable figures for its membership. Since the society's inclusion of women in the early 1990s, Skull and Bones selects fifteen men and women of the junior class to join the society. Skull and Bones selects new members among students every spring as part of Yale University's "Tap Day", and has done so since 1879.
The first extended description of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book Four Years at Yale, noted that "the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing." Brooks Mather Kelley attributed the interest in Yale senior societies to the fact that underclassmen members of then freshman, sophomore, and junior class societies returned to campus the following years and could share information about society rituals, while graduating seniors were, with their knowledge of such, at least a step removed from campus life. The association was founded by Russell and Daniel Coit Gilman, a Skull and Bones member. The society's assets are managed by its alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones' co-founder. Alternative names for Skull and Bones are The Order, Order 322 and The Brotherhood of Death. The first senior members included Russell, Taft, and 12 other members. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded "the Order of the Skull and Bones". Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season's Phi Beta Kappa awards.
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