Secret societies?

Following

there’s multiple??

There are two that I know of. The first one recruits sophomore fall and runs off of a lin system. Around half of the people in it are unaffiliated. They wear all black and meet at random places in the middle of the night. It’s very easy to figure out who’s in this one because they never really try to hide it. I have no idea what they actually do except smoke often, congregate in the middle of the night, and post on instagram. If I put the name here I feel like that’s saying too much but iykyk, really is not hard to figure out. I saw one of the cards that got passed under someone’s door for it last semester.

The second one I have heard about from a few different people. It is a society of art related things (music, photography, etc) and recruits as early as freshman year. This one is actually secret, nobody will say anything about this one at all. Two people who told me about their “tap” process while it was ongoing straight up lie and deny to my face that they ever did it now. It’s creepy. If I had to guess they are connected to one particular upperclassmen-only downtown event, iykyk.

If anyone else knows anything more about either of these drop it below

got really bored on break so im typing this all out, hopefully its interesting to some1. basically this gets more evident once you become a junior and obvious as a senior. just like frats theres a cycle of: year1 super invested, its cool, year2 comes around and its like mid, whatever.

but from what I can see there are like three different 'spheres' of secret society at penn.

1 - frat scene. things like the mortarboard senior society and omega/whatever the social chair one is calling itself now. occasionally do events downtown and minor social things, will tap junior year or senior fall. basically a whos who competition. other senior societies like lantern and order also do things within this sphere. these are less secret societies and more just super loose social organizations that do social events every so often. very heavy on scene guys. barely any non-theta girls, someone complained to me they like monopolized one of these and gatekeep other sororities lol. I think MB did a downtown event one year with zete that was alright. more than anything from what i hear these groups are for greeklife kids that want to meet new people but also the people that also "get it" instead of random bots
2 - art scene. biggest one here is skull and bone/the tomb and they do events sometimes too. theres a lot more buy in to this one, they tap sophomore year, wear black, etc. someone already talked it above. there is also the other big one some1 above talked ab thats very close lipped and I am 90% sure they mean offtheair. I heard once that entire event is a front for a society and given who runs it now and in the past thats prob true. there is also the one group that keeps putting up the Addams flyers but hasn't done anything yet. people here are lots of overlap with the unaffiliated alt scene (herzog, thewalk), a scattering of castle/zbt/older zete guys, LOTS of older oax, and a couple token tabard girls
3 - academics adjacent. stuff like friars, the one where you have to be a president of something to join, academic/debate societies like Philo, most other senior societies since they focus more on actual academics. not much to say with these since they vary so much and are talked about less but highly recommend joining.

surprisingly little overlap between all of these. from what I can tell there is a dynamic where the art sphere tactically excludes the frat sphere from almost everything they do which is hilarious in context. the academics ones sort of do their own thing entirely.