The rituals of the secret student society in the movie The Skulls (2000) include dueling with antique pistols in a marble pavilion built especially for that purpose.

 Now let’s get down to what makes a Dark Acadamia setting truly dark: the secret societies!

There are for students, and in the Ivy League schools, for the elitist of the elite. Dartmouth has its Sphinx Society, Princeton its 21 Club, and Yale, the most notorious one of all: The Skull and Bones, thrust into the public eye in the 1980s when it was revealed President George H. W. Bush had been a member and they performed esoteric rituals with, variously, Geronimo’s,  Martin Van Buren’s, or Pancho Villa’s skull. Since then, the society, and others like it, have been tied into conspiracy theories and the Illuminati, generally around the idea that “they” are the ones really in power and don’t want the lowly  “you” to know the truth of that.

The organization, recruitment, activities, and members of these societies vary by school, and their activities and rituals are… well, secret. Many of the oldest, however (we’re talking early 1800s) revolve around death and mortality, with Gothic imagery and even, in the case of Skull and Bones, a clubhouse shaped like an Egyptian tomb. Therefore, it isn’t too hard to speculate they had Freemason roots. It also isn’t too hard, also,  to speculate on connections to the occult.

But, there’s a more mundane, though no less fascinating, explanation. Many of the earliest ones grew out of debate and rhetoric clubs, which relied on the teachings of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato — ancient Greece. Socrates, the first great philosopher, offed himself with hemlock after being accused of corrupting the (male) youth of Athens with his teachings, which his accusers thought showed impiety to the gods: Athens 1, Socrates 0. So naturally, the debating clubs were associated with death, and also rebirth, as the Neoclassical movements were in full swing at the times these first clubs were founded. In a way, Socrates and students were the first college. Debate, philosophy, and rhetoric were given more weight in schools of the 19th century, as they were considered the first steps toward intellectual enlightenment.

A long list of schools and their clubs has been compiled by Wikipedia, and is here.

Need a secret society for your Dark Academia setting?

Dark Academia, Secret Societies

Typical student of Columbia University, 1903

 For some reason, there aren’t as many fictional colleges around as there are cities, states, and countries. Of them, Miskatonic University, H. P. Lovecraft’s creation and the setting for many of his stories, is the best known and detailed, even having a map. (I’d call those stories Dark Academia before the term existed, even though Lovecraft wrote them as contemporary to his time.) C. S. Lewis created a Oxford stand-in called the University of Edgestow for his novel That Hideous Strength, and of course there’s Hogwarts and its more adult cousin, Brakebill University, from the Harry Potter and Magicians magic-learning school series, respectively. I’d say the time is ripe for some more, especially the Ivy League variety.

The American Ivy League schools are a group of eight of the oldest, most respected, and most elite colleges, and to graduate from them means you are truly a part of upper crust and belonging to something larger than yourself. The very names speak of Bluebloods: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth. Why were they called ivy league schools? You’d think it was from the amount of ivy climbing up the centuries-old campus buildings, but there’s another explanation:  the 19th century custom of soon-to-graduates planting ivy around a designated campus building, a ceremony that included speeches given.  The actual term “Ivy League” wasn’t used until the 1930s. The Dark Acadamia aesthetic is mostly based around these schools, with influences from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinbourgh on the other side of the Atlantic.

Alexander Hall on Princeton University campus. Built in 1894, it’s more Romanesque than Gothic.

I’ve had to good fortune to visit several of these prestigious schools: Oxford, Yale, and Princeton; one  Christmas, I attended the Princeton Ballet’s version of The Nutcracker at Alexander Hall, above. One of my father’s most prized photographs was one of Albert Einstein in his alumni cap and robe in procession to a graduation ceremony, a year or so before he died. Whenever we drove past the campus, family members always pointed out to be his (rather modest) clapboard house, while telling me it belonged to the smartest man in the world. Fun family factoid: one of my maternal aunts, who was then employed as a nurse in NYC, gave Albert Einstein a sponge bath when he was hospitalized for some illness.

Need a college for your Dark Academia setting? Here’s a few.

Dark Academia, Colleges and Universities