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The Senior Skull Society is one of the most exclusive institutions on campus.
Membership is capped at 15 Skulls per year — male senior students who exemplify leadership and service at the University of Maine — and potential members must both apply and be nominated.
The group serves as a liaison to alumni but has grown less visible to undergraduate students since it was founded in 1906.
“I’d like to see us more active on campus,” Kevin Price, president of the Senior Skull Society, said. “That’s one area where we could definitely improve. It’s hard to explain to freshmen what we’re about.”
The disconnect between Skulls and freshmen is a recent rift. The impetus for the Skulls, beyond providing service to UMaine, was to preserve the university’s traditions by explaining their history and importance.
“The Skulls were tasked with looking after the freshmen and helping them out and keeping them in line, basically,” Price said.
“Looking back, the Skulls may have been more visible in the past and that is completely true,” Doug Mathews, the Skulls’ faculty advisor and a UMaine graduate student, said. “That’s because a lot of the things we used to do just can’t be done anymore.”
The Skulls were the original Interfraternity Council and Student Government, but the development of those modern groups edged the Skulls out of the roles they previously filled. The charter Skulls represented a range of Greeks and approved the existence of other student organizations on campus, which Student Government does now.
According to Price, “they created the Sophomore Owls as a way to look after the freshmen” after the group’s purpose shifted.
The Owls, a group of male sophomore students with a purpose similar to that of the Skulls, has been perceived as a “pre-Skull society.” However, Price said Skulls do not need to be past Owls and being an Owl does not guarantee a spot on the Skull roster.
The Skulls’ service to undergraduates is rooted in the Traditions Project and in organizing the sale and delivery of care packages to on-campus students. The Traditions Project focuses on a different area of campus with each class of Skulls.
Price said last year’s Skulls worked to erect memorials to campus benefactors in buildings named after them, and this year’s Skulls are working to hang a banner with the Stein Song lyrics in Alfond Arena above the scoreboard.
Price said the Skulls also help with the Maine Hello and the president’s dinner on the mall at the beginning of the school year, as well as with tailgating at Homecoming.
Mathews hopes to make the Skulls, as well as their female counterpart, the All Maine Women, more visible on campus again so “that people have an … understanding of the basis of the two groups.”
“I think there’s a lot of myths … about what the two groups are,” Mathews said. “I would like both groups to have a more public image on campus again. I think that would be the ultimate goal for me.”
Mathews suggested a collaboration between the Skulls and the All Maine Women would increase their visibility on campus.
“The potential for where the two groups can go together is limitless,” Mathews said. “I would keep the groups separate purely because that’s just how it’s been. For a hundred years, it has worked.”
Despite Mathew’s ambition to transform the group, the networking aspect of current Skulls with past members — Skullumni — will likely remain unaltered.
“Just being surrounded by a group of strong leaders, it helps to improve your leadership,” Mathews said.
Matt Donahue, a 2010 Skullumni enrolled in a master’s degree program in public administration at UMaine, said the cultivation of leadership in the group has been a tremendous benefit.
“Being able to see all the leaders in one place, it really helps you grow as a leader,” he said. “It makes you realize how to become a better leader. You want to live up to that expectation.”
Matt Ciampa, another Skullumni, said the connections formed in the Senior Skull Society are on par with the network of brothers from any fraternity.
Ciampa said he would remain “lifelong friends with all 12 of the other guys” and would feel comfortable using the alumni contacts he has made to search for a job.
Mathews said it is a powerful experience “being part of something that has such a strong history and such a strong potential for the future.”
“Skulls have been on campus since 1906. There have been a lot of different focuses of the organization over time and they’ve changed to fit the times and I see us as in another transition time,” he added. “How can we get better? How can we make ourselves bigger and better?”
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