Generally speaking, the secret society is a concept best at home in the world of adults. Regardless of whether they're an Illuminati-style conspiracy ruling the world or just a Brotherhood of Funny Hats, they feature an exclusively adult membership, indulge in very adult vices, and often concern themselves with the mature world of business and politics. However, there are major exceptions to this, and quite a few of them begin at school.
As anyone who's ever gone to high school knows, kids tend to form cliques and clubs very easily; these groups are already prone to playing gatekeeper and keeping secrets, so it's perhaps no surprise that a few of these groups take their cloistered nature to the next level by actually becoming secret societies. As for why this happens, it often involves some form of rulebreaking and the need to keep it hidden from the teachers.
Regardless of whether it's established in a high school or a college, the scale, organization, and influence of the secret society varies wildly. In some cases, it can be little more than a small gang of friends enacting cheeky pranks on the school with some grandiose posturing thrown in for good measure... or it can be a vast and shadowy cult of students with sinister rituals, fingers in every dirty pie in the school, power over the teachers, and influence that may even extend into the world of adults and offer plum jobs to graduating members. An Absurdly Powerful Student Council may be involved. Depending on the genre of the story, there may even be some form of magic or supernatural power at work.
More advanced variants may overlap with any one of the Secret Societies on the list, from Benevolent Conspiracy to Mystery Cult.
May possess a School Club Front, though not always. Often overlaps with School Clubs Are Serious Business.
Compare and contrast Children's Covert Coterie.
Examples
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- In Locke & Key, flashbacks reveal that Lovecraft High School was once home to the Keepers of the Keys (AKA The Tamers of the Tempest). Consisting entirely of Rendell Locke's closest friends and fellow students, they devoted themselves to exploiting the magical Keys of the Locke Family to the fullest extent, sometimes for fun, sometimes in order to get an unfair advantage at school. Most notably, they used the magic to put on the best performance of The Tempest in Lovecraft's history. The group ultimately fell apart after they attempted to make new Keys with Whispering Iron from beyond the Black Door, accidentally creating the Big Bad and getting three of the Keepers killed. For good measure, due to the Riffel Rule, the true nature of the Keepers remains secret to everyone above the age of eighteen, including the adult Keepers.
Film - Live Action
- Dead Poets Society: English teacher John Keating's students form a secret society who meet at night to read poetry by Whitman, Thoreau, Frost, and Shakespeare (among others) as a rebellion against the Welton Academy's rigid curriculum. After the headmaster observes Keating's unusual teaching methods, he sets out to put an end to it, fires Keating, and threatens to expel any student who objects. They all do, but their future at the school is left up in the air.
- The Skulls is centred around the main character's efforts to find his place among the eponymous college-based secret society, which reportedly has influence all over the school and the upper echelons of American society. For good measure, since it's based on Yale's infamous Skull and Bones society, there's also a lot of sinister rituals and corruption going on behind the scenes.
Literature
- In The Big Chocolate Bar by Margaret Clark, a ban on junk food at a high school camp results in the formation of the Chocolate and Coke Committee, a covert group of students attempting to smuggle in contraband sweets - all while disguised as a group planning for an end-of-camp talent show. The whole thing quickly becomes a hilarious metaphor for the drugs trade, with some members of the CCC taking advantage of the limited supply to charge up to $20 for a single Mars Bar.
- In Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay, a group of undergraduates at Oxford have established a secret society with various rituals, and decide to call down a curse upon their college's Bursar. They are rather taken aback when the Bursar promptly turns up dead.
- In the backstory of The Gold Bat by P. G. Wodehouse, the League was a secret society at the school the protagonists attend; originally founded to fight back against bullies, it was eventually broken up when it turned to bullying on its own account and one of its victims nearly died. Now, it seems someone at the school is trying to revive it, and the protagonist is in the firing line...
- Half Moon Investigations has Les Jeunes Etudiantes, a group of elementary school girls who orchestrate complex schemes to get boys expelled from their school, so that girls can get all the privileged positions and eventually Take Over the World.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban reveals that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was once home to a secret gang known as the Marauders. Consisting of four gifted students known only as Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, they were notorious pranksters around the school but almost never caught in the act, thanks in part to their most secret creation, the Marauder's Map. However, it soon turns out they had even deeper secrets than initially expected: the four were actually Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter - a werewolf and three unregistered animagi.
- One of the subplots in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix revolves around Harry, Ron, and Hermione starting a secret student club called Dumbledore's Army note to teach combat magic, sparked by the refusal of Professor Dolores Umbridge to actually teach useful defensive magic. Once Umbridge becomes the new headmistress, Dumbledore's Army evolves into a makeshift La Résistance undermining Umbridge's administration.
- By Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore's Army has been upgraded - under the guidance of Neville Longbottom - into an actual La Résistance against the Death-Eater dominated school direction.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reveals that Voldemort had one of his own back when he was a student — the Knights of Walpurgis, who were the forerunners of the Death Eaters.
- The Magician's Land introduces the League, a secret gang of students at Brakebills dedicated to pranking individuals who have committed some kind of social offence. Plum, the League's president, claims that it's an Ancient Tradition within the school, but privately admits that it's actually based on something she read in a P. G. Wodehouse novel (presumably The Gold Bat above). Their latest target is a student wine waiter believed to be short pouring at mealtimes... but the attempted grand finale of the prank campaign ends with Plum accidentally trespassing on a forbidden area of the school and getting expelled. After spending some time working alongside Quentin Coldwater as part of a magical heist crew, Plum can't help but look back and belatedly realize just how silly the League was.
- Reconstructing Amelia: Student-run clubs are officially banned at Grace Hall thanks to a long history of hazing that culminated in an incident where a student died, but they've popped back up and continue to operate in secret - including the Magpies, which Amelia is invited to join. She does, and the hazing quickly proves to still be alive and well. It turns out the headmaster of Grace Hall is well aware of the clubs still being active, but thanks to several of the members' parents being on the school board, he can't do anything to shut them down. He's been investigating and collecting evidence on his own for a while so he can finally show irrefutable proof of what's going on and have the clubs shut down for good. He ultimately succeeds, but sadly, not until Amelia has died thanks to her involvement with the Magpies.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The Myth Arc of the series revolves around a conspiracy by a secret society of students at Kimberly Magic Academy to assassinate seven professors to avenge the torturous murder of their former student Chloe Halford in the prologue to volume 1. They are led by main character Oliver Horn himself, who is Halford's secret son, and most of his coconspirators are members of his extended family.
Live Action TV
- In the CSI: NY episode "Some Buried Bones," the body of a Chelsea University student leads the investigators to a secret fraternity known as the Kings and Shadows. The victim was writing an expose on the society, initially suggesting that they had him bumped off before he could reveal their secrets, but it's discovered that the victim had undergone a ritualized beating as part of an exit ceremony and the perpetrators swear that they left him alive. Turns out the victim was killed by his own roommate not long after the exit ceremony - in order to take advantage of a college clause that would supposedly give him straight "A"s for the semester if a roommate died; the Kings and Shadows were just patsies.
- The Haunting Hour: The episode "Alien Candy" features the alien club, advertised as a group for sci-fi fans... but is actually a club for actual aliens planning to take over the school.
- House of Anubis: The Sibuna Club is a group of students from Anubis House who decided to attach a proper name to their little mystery-solving endeavors, complete with an initiation ceremony, an oath of club loyalty, and an extreme desperation to keep the club a secret from everyone else around them. The club's goal changes with the season, but always involves solving a mystery about the House and hunting down a specific MacGuffin before anyone else can. Ironically enough, in the first season the group that Sibuna was opposing was another Secret Society... but one made up of teachers and other important adult authority figures.
- Kamen Rider Fourze has the Kamen Rider Club at school, which is actually made up of the students helping the Kamen Riders and has a portal to a base on the moon. It is unclear just how much the club claims to be a legitimate school club - said portal is hidden in an old locker in a closed-off classroom, and they don't have a teacher sponsor until Ohsugi finds out.
- Leverage: One episode features a college society known as Order of the 206, aka the Dustmen, heavily inspired by the real-life Skull and Bones society at Yale
.
Nate: "I will grind your bones into dust and, with your blood and it, make a paste." - Midsomer Murders: In the episode Murder On St. Malley's Day, when a student at the local boarding school appears murdered, a Conspiracy Theorist believes that it's the work of "The Pudding Club", a secret Illumnati-esque group of former students responsible for mayhem around the world. The truth about the Pudding Club is still criminal, but (comparatively) a lot less sinister: the Club is a secret money pool that was formed by students long ago to purchase sweets that they couldn't get in the school's mess hall and, once those students graduated and became ambassadors, kept it funded for future generations by smuggling artworks from their ambassadorial posts for the students to sell. All of the murder victims throughout the episode were getting in the way of the school headmaster lining his pockets with the Pudding Club's money.
- Veronica Mars:
- The Nepture High School has the Tritons, a secret society for the richest kids at the school. In "Clash of the Tritons" they end up becoming suspects in falsely accusing Veronica of distributing fake IDs. However, despite their hooded robes and weird rituals, it turns out that they're innocent in this case: the whole thing was arranged by a student by the name of Rick as revenge against the Tritons for rejecting his membership - and revenge against Veronica, as Keith got his father arrested for embezzlement.
- A much more malign version is present in "The Bitch Is Back", with the Castle at for Hearst College, which might just cross the line into a full-fledged cult. Among other things, pledges are tortured to make them tell the truth about their various misdeeds.
- Vienna Blood: In episode 3, Max Liebermann's nephew starts cutting himself at the same time that Max and Oskar Reinhardt open an investigation into the death of a cadet at the local Military School, also attended by the nephew. Both incidents turn out to be connected to hazing rituals conducted by a secret fraternity on the campus. In the end, Oskar is Passed Over for Promotion for embarrassing the school, because both his superior Herr Strasser and his rival for the promotion Inspector von Bulow were members of the fraternity.
Tabletop Games
- In the Chronicles of Darkness book Immortals, several highly exclusive private schools around the world play host to a network of student-run secret societies; known simply as "The Club," it's populated by students who have made themselves immortal through psychic power. Addicted to a life without adult consequences, the members use their abilities to destroy the lives of select students outside the club, eventually driving them to suicide... whereupon the club member responsible enacts a Grand Theft Me on the target, patches their new body up, and goes on with their life until an attractive "new model" catches their eye. By now, some of its members are centuries old, and the Club itself has become legendarily depraved: on top of gleefully indulging in corruption and date rape, they've also turned the search for new bodies into a sickening breed of sport, even offering prizes for the best-engineered suicide.
Video Games
- Black Closet:
- In keeping with the exaggerated Boarding School of Horrors, one of the cases involves a ring of seniors "recruiting" freshmen to serve as their personal slaves.
- The Red Mask Society is a much more concrete secret society within St. Claudine's Academy; at one point, you need to infiltrate their ranks and accept a certain number of tasks from them... and failing to complete your work for them on time will result in them poisoning your Queen.
- Criminal Case: The Ad Astrans from Criminal Case: The Conspiracy was a secret society who started out as a bunch of students at Grimsborough University before becoming the main Big Bad Ensemble, and causing the Grimsborough Earthquake with their scientific experiments. And that's just the older members - The younger ones proved just as bad, offing their professor on orders from one of the elder members because he knew who said elder members were.
- Dragon Age features this within the Circles of Magi, which are treated as both schools and prisons for mages. Many fraternities exist among the various mages, each with their own distinctive political opinions, but these are public and tolerated by the Templars. However, it's unfortunately not uncommon for secret cabals of blood mages to exist within the Circles, often operating like terrorist cells. Depending on attitude, they can be anything from clueless apprentices desperate for a chance to get ahead, disgruntled members of the Libertarian fraternity, and even flat-out Maleficar and Abominations. Unfortunately, the Templars don't care to differentiate between them, and will use the presence of either to put the screws on their mage captives, sometimes to the point of Annulling a Circle entirely.
- In Persona 3, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (known as SEES) is registered as a school club with Chairman Ikutsuki as its advisor, and members even stay in the same dorm. However, the true purpose of the "club" is to investigate the Shadows, Tartarus and the Dark Hour, supernatural phenomena that can only be experienced by a few. All members possess the ability to summon a Persona, which is the only known weapon against the Shadows.
- The Sims 2: All pre-made campuses note in the University expansion have a Secret Society, complete with a uniform, a secret handshake, and a hidden lot filled with expensive (and questionably legal) appliances and décor. Befriending at least three existing members will see your Sim inducted into it — after a good ol' 'getting handcuffed and shoved into a limo in the dead of night' routine, of course.
Western Animation
- The Great North: Judy and Hamm reform the Saved By The Spells, a secret organization composed of Dead Moose's high school students. Despite the grandiose and Punny Name, the group is better known for pulling off pranks around school, and it even turns out Beef had been a member of a previous incarnation during his own high school days.
- In the South Park episode "The List", the girls in school have the "Pleases and Sparkles" club with no adults or boys allowed. Their "list-making" is treated as Serious Business, and the episode revolves around a list they made regarding the hottest boys in school, with Clyde at the top and Kyle at the very bottom. It turns out to be part of a conspiracy to get free shoes, as Clyde's dad owns the shoe store at the mall. Meanwhile, Kyle attempts to burn down the school in revenge while Bebe pulls a gun on Stan and Wendy to keep the conspiracy a secret (ultimately committing Accidental Murder on Kenny).
- Tiny Toons Looniversity: In "Skulls and Sillybones" we see a secret society among campus calling themselves Skulls and Sillybones. They move about in black cloaks and in order to join them, an inductee has to perform numerous embarrassing rituals.
Real Life
- The Studentenverbindung, a type of student society widespread in the Germanosphere, is the Real Life Trope Maker. They consist of either university students or high schoolers and have historically participated in many revolutionary movements, notably the Revolutions of 1848. Historically, student societies of this nature were often quite secretive in the early 1800s, incorporating arcane rituals, oaths of loyalty, and obscure identifying symbols - to the point that many were hit by the exact same ban as the historical Illuminati.
- Skull and Bones is the most infamous of three student and alumnus-run secret societies at Yale and the center of conspiracy theories alleging that they rule the world via alumni who've gone on to high-ranking positions in government, including multiple presidents of the United States.
- Several American colleges have secret societies; likewise, some high schools also have these.
