Talk:Brothers in Unity

21st-century Brothers
Is the new Brothers all-male, as indicated by all available photos and contraindicated by nothing on the group's website; or mixed-gender, as asserted without apparent evidence by two brand-new accounts with no previous edits ( and )?

@Proxy1661 has added a citation (link) whose edit summary says "...indicates group now mixed gender (based on 21st century membership records". But the cited page contains no obvious mention of the 21st-century group at all, much less its membership policies. Perhaps I am overlooking the relevant passage? Or perhaps the link was meant to point to some other webpage? @Proxy1661, kindly explain.

Similarly, both @Fallspice and @Proxy1661 have asserted, without citation or even explanation, that the new Brothers is "...similar in nature to the Elizabethan Club." Again, what sources support this? PRRfan (talk) 01:01, 30 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Agree that @Proxy1661 or @Fallspice does not present credentials to make that statement of similarity. Only photos online show all-male composition. Revision was correct to delete edits by@Proxy1661 and @Fallspice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:2D61:7E50:54A9:8B56:A0D3:E093 (talk) 03:10, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

"Revived" as a "secret society"?
Brothers In Unity was formed as a literary society; it published membership lists and ultimately allowed anyone at Yale to use its library—a club, to be sure, but bearing few of the distinguishing characteristics of the college's secret societies of today. At least one anonymous editor wants to refer to the latter-day Brothers as a "secret society" (offering no citations that refer to it as such). But if it is a secret society, with fundamentally different ways of doing business, is it proper to refer to it as a "revival" of the old, open literary society? Or is it a new organization with the same name? PRRfan (talk) 04:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Reference Guide on Brothers in Unity History
In an effort to dispel friction between editors and avoid dissemination of uncited materials, I have posted a link to an 1841 account on the society's history, membership, founding and culture: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Catalogue_of_the_Society_of_Brothers_i/CqBLAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Yale+%22Brothers+in+Unity%22&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover Andrewsong49 (talk) 16:57, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Andrewsong49. The article cites this useful book several times. What would be helpful now is a source to guide description of the group's current incarnation. Outstanding questions include:

Thanks. PRRfan (talk) 18:33, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Does the group call itself a "secret society"? Or is it more properly described as a "debating society", or perhaps, as some editors have said, more like the Elizabethan Club?
 * How many members does the group have?
 * Does it draw an annual tap class from all Yale College classes?
 * Can alumni join? What is the status of alumni "members"? Are they active participants, or are they just part of an associated fundraising and networking group?
 * Does the group admit women? Are there currently any women members?

new vs. old
Hi, @Mythofcentury. You changed this sentence ("While the original Brothers had a relatively open admissions policy and at its height encompassed nearly half the student body, its new incarnation appears to more closely resemble Yale's restrictive and far smaller secret societies and an attempt to return to 'Masonic secrecy'") to this: "While the original Brothers had a relatively open admissions policy, its new incarnation appears to more closely resemble Yale's restrictive and far smaller secret societies to restore the organization's original 'Masonic secrecy'". We don't know much about the new group, but we do know that it's a lot smaller and a lot more restrictive than the old one. So I think it's useful to note both explicitly; what do you think? Also, as a matter of grammar, I can't figure out what "to restore..." is supposed to hark back to. Do you mean to say "...its new incarnation appears to more closely resemble Yale's restrictive and far smaller secret societies AND to BE AN EFFORT TO restore the organization's original 'Masonic secrecy'"? Or perhaps "...its new incarnation appears to more closely resemble Yale's restrictive and far smaller secret societies and to mimic the original organization's early 'Masonic secrecy'"? PRRfan (talk) 02:39, 2 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi @PRRfan], to answer your question, I think "restore" in hindsight should be revised to "practice" or "mimic" as suggested. Good catch. I think if we are, however, standardizing for redundancy and avoiding the accidental inflation of word count for said article, we should either retain "and at its height encompassed nearly half the student body" selectively in just the topic sentence or in the description of second incarnation - not both. Not quite sure how, on principle, we can retain these two exact sentences with same information when previous edit by you erased an attempt to provide additional source for Masonic secrecy for being already mentioned in the first incarnation. [[User:Mythofcentury|Mythofcentury (talk) 03:04, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, @Mythofcentury. I wouldn't object to a brief mention of Baldwin; something like "...resemble Yale's restrictive and far smaller secret societies and to mimic the organization's original "Masonic secrecy", as Baldwin put it" and we could even footnote the previous citation. (Perhaps I overreacted to seeing Baldwin's entire name and citation duplicated in the span of eight paragraphs.) As for "half the student body": by "topic sentence" do you mean the second sentence of the article? I think there's enough space between that intro paragraph and the second incarnation section to justify repeating the fact as part of a comparison between old and new. You're right, though, that we don't need to copy and paste the wording. How about "While the original Brothers had a relatively open admissions policy and a large membership, its new incarnation..."? PRRfan (talk) 03:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that all sounds quite wonderful! You're a much better editor than me; I'm fairly new to the community, in all frankness. I defer to the language proposed above. Mythofcentury (talk) 03:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Great, and thanks; I'll make the changes. And welcome! Here's a trick for duplicating a citation that's already somewhere in the article: in visual editing mode (as opposed to source editing mode), you can simply copy the footnote (e.g. [5]) and paste it as needed somewhere else. The Wikipedia software will automatically take care of the formatting. PRRfan (talk) 03:53, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Quite interesting as to the group - they remind me of the Stewards Society at Georgetown. Mythofcentury (talk) 03:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)