10 Facts About Signet Society

1.

Signet Society celebrates most of the arts, including music, the visual arts, and theater.

FactSnippet No. 532,042
2.

Many undergraduate Signet Society members are in other Harvard College artistic and literary organizations, including the Harvard Advocate, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Harvard Crimson, the Harvard Lampoon, the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra, and the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club.

FactSnippet No. 532,043
3.

Architectural historian Douglass Shand-Tucci includes an in-depth discussion of Signet Society's building in his history of Harvard's campus, relating the oddity that a firm known for its preeminence in Gothic Revival was employed to renovate an 1820s Colonial residence into a neo-Federal structure with baroque details.

FactSnippet No. 532,044
4.

Emblem of the Signet Society was, at one time, "a signet-ring inclosing a nettle, " the signet-ring symbolizing unity and the nettle symbolizing impartiality.

FactSnippet No. 532,045
5.

Signet Society eschews initiation rituals common to Harvard's Final Clubs and the Lampoon in favor of an induction, during which each new member receives a red rose.

FactSnippet No. 532,046
6.

The Signet Society maintains a library of these works, which were originally literary, but now include programs or other artifacts marking the performance of music, films, or displays of the visual artistry of members.

FactSnippet No. 532,047
7.

Since 1910, the Signet Society has hosted an Annual Dinner honoring poets, authors, musicians, and social commentators.

FactSnippet No. 532,048
8.

The Signet Society has a longstanding, reciprocal relationship with the Elizabethan Club, of Yale University.

FactSnippet No. 532,049
9.

Since 2010, the Signet Society has hosted Artists-in-Residence in a second-floor apartment.

FactSnippet No. 532,050
10.

One of the Signet Society's "gravest mistakes" was their rejection of cellist Yo-Yo Ma while he was an undergraduate at Harvard.

FactSnippet No. 532,051