Sic
vos non vobis mellificatis apes
— So
d o yo u b e es m a k e h o n e y , n o t f o r yo u r se lv e s .
Virgil
2019 Newsletter of the Signet Society of Harvard College 4 6 D u n s t e r S t r e e t , C a m b r i d g e , M a ss a c h u s e t t s 0 2 1 3 8 • 6 1 7 - 5 4 7 - 0 5 2 6 • S i g n e t S o c i e t y . o r g
Hooray—We’re 150 Years Old! To The Society! In 1870, a small group of Harvard undergraduates, unsatisfied with the fraternities and other social clubs on campus, banded together and decided to form a new society. We wonder whether the first members of the Signet, the class of 1871, had any idea what the Society would look like a century and a half later. As far as we know, the members of the Signet as early as 1881 met on Friday evenings “for a cup of chocolate and an hour or two of conversation,” and elected undergraduates who distinguished themselves by their academic achievement. It would be decades before the Signet became known as a home for literary-minded undergraduates and faculty to come together in conversation over food, but by December of 1970, the Crimson described the Signet in print as “a luncheon club where faculty and students meet to discuss the fine arts and humanities.” (The newsworthy event? “Signet Society’s Barriers Opened To Admit Women,” a change that was officially voted upon just months after our Centennial Dinner that April—and just late enough that the women who had been provisionally elected by the undergraduates beginning in 1965 went unlisted and unmentioned in the centennial catalogue of members, and in the otherwise obsessively detailed “Short History of the Signet Society.”) Since 1870 and then 1970, the Signet has reinvented itself dozens of times over. Our undergraduates tend to elect new members who create art as well as discuss it, who write poetry as well as dissect it, and who direct plays as well as attend them. They
drink more coffee than hot chocolate. They are as likely to host Open Mic Nights that expand the Society’s passion for the arts to the wider Harvard community as they are to invite distinguished literary talents to speak at Library Dinner – which is to say, they do both, frequently and excellently. They create art and live it—like we all have, and may still now! Our Annual Dinner on April 25th, 2020, will be a celebration of the arts, the writing, and the conversation that connects our community across the generations. We are thrilled to be presenting the Signet Medal to Nicholas Britell ’03, Agnes Chu ’02, and Natalie Portman ’03—a generation of Signet brilliance. We’re doing so in the rooftop ballroom of Boston’s historic Omni Parker House, thinking that this year more of us might want to celebrate. The Parker House was founded in 1855, so they know the actual names of sesquicentenary events. Alas, no guarantees of a rooftop skyline sunset, but we are promised a healthy dose of Bostonian literary, artistic, and historic gravitas. Longfellow, Emerson, and Whittier held a weekly salon there, Dickens wrote and performed A Christmas Carol there, Judy Garland sang, JFK courted Jackie, Ho Chi Minh bused tables, Malcolm X cooked, Mayor Curley had his own table, and now we’ll all be there! If you can’t join us in April, check the back page of this newsletter for a list of events that Signet grads are hosting in cities across the country. We’d love to see you there or here in Cambridge. Our next 150 years is starting soon.