Cap and Skull

Cap and Skull is a senior-year coeducational honor society at Rutgers University, founded on January 18, 1900.

Admission to Cap and Skull is dependent on excellence in academics, athletics, the arts, and public service. Leadership as well as character are also considered crucial factors for membership. Using these criteria, only 18 new members, or less than one-half of one percent of a Rutgers College class, are selected each year.

On January 18, 1900, 10 members of the Senior Class of Rutgers College assembled in the Chi Psi Lodge on College Avenue and began to define what would become the greatest honor that a Rutgers student could aspire to. Drawing inspiration from Skull and Bones and Quill and Dagger, Yale and Cornell's Senior Class Honor Society, Cap and Skull sought to identify and bring together the top leaders of the Rutgers College senior class.

That night, the 10 founders drew up a Cap and Skull constitution and adopted a code of secrecy and the motto, Spectemur agendo, let us be judged by our actions; for it was a student’s deeds and leadership that afforded him to be selected for Cap and Skull. To ensure that the group would remain highly selective, selection of a new member required a unanimous vote of the current members and, as a result, over the first two decades of the Society, few students – no more than eight men in any of these years – became Cap and Skull members.

The 1920s found the College recovering from the First World War, and the Skulls began to reexamine their selection criteria to increase membership. Under the new system, each leadership position and honor on campus was awarded a points value, and students with the highest cumulative value were selected for induction into Cap and Skull. In 1923, in response to the growing student body, the number of members to be tapped each year was fixed at 12 and a tri-fold criteria for selection was established, still in use today: first – activities, athletic and campus; second – scholarship, and third – character and service to Rutgers. The Society's skull-emblazoned caps were first donned in 1924, and are still worn today, in honor of Cap and Skull's history, spirit, and tradition.

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