Kappa Beta Phi

Kappa Beta Phi is a secret society with at least one surviving chapter, based on Wall Street in New York City, that is made up of high-ranking financial executives. The purpose of the organization today is largely social and honorific. The current honor society meets once a year at a black-tie dinner to induct new members. History Kappa Beta Phi lore, as told to initiates of the 1950s, was that it was the second oldest campus or Greek-letter fraternity after Phi Beta Kappa, founded earlier in 1776. However, this was likely facetious. Members were told that the society was established as an alternative to Phi Beta Kappa to allow young men to meet and share ideas in an atmosphere of pub conviviality rather than more formal and elitist salon discussions; its reversed Greek letters were purportedly chosen to reinforce the contrast. To decipher the group's actual founding and provide context, university yearbooks began as student publications, often organized by fraternities with the result that the Greek Letter organizations gained prominent billing in the books, along with athletics and other clubs, and often, printed extensive humor sections. The joking, at times rendered in poetic style, with cartoons, other illustrations, elaborate spoofs and short news items were immensely popular, driving sales, allowing the editors and contributors a rare opportunity to poke fun. Their targets included academic administrations, topical news, and other members of the class with nicknames and remarks about habits as between intimate friends. Where jokes and satire wouldn't play well on a Greek letter organization's actual pages whose members were the rabid purchasers of the books, an inventive, sharp-tongued writer could offer, instead, a fictitious entity, and pages of joking. These editors would sometimes even sign off with an apology closing the section to those who might be offended. Virtually every school student body offered these books, which in the Big Ten schools and other large state schools could reach over 700 pages.