MIT’s (mostly) secret society

“We meet in the name of Osiris.” 

Rather than being based on inductees’ wealth or their family’s political power—common criteria for senior societies at other schools—membership was designated “for those undergraduates who have shown in their daily life an especial love and devotion to the Institute,” reads the once-secret history of Osiris that now resides in MIT’s archives. 

This history was written by Edward Pennell Brooks, Class of 1917, as a speech he gave at several Osiris initiations in the early 1950s, but its factual content is attributed to Alfred Edgar Burton, MIT’s first dean of students. If the organization’s purpose were not kept secret, Burton warned, MIT’s leaders wouldn’t be able to have such frank and open discussions with the students.

“It was a very interesting organization—the word I would use is ‘private’ rather than ‘secret,’” says William J. Hecht ’61, SM ’76, who was inducted into Osiris in 1961 and went on to serve as executive vice president and chief executive of the MIT Alumni Association for 25 years. “If something controversial were to come up—a faculty gripe about something—it was a way that the administration or the faculty could air it in front of a small group (we were around a dozen) of ‘student leaders’ and be candid about what’s what.”

Osiris was started by Arthur Jeremiah Sweet, Class of 1904, who transferred to MIT after having a run-in with the fraternities at Cornell. Sweet wanted to create a society without the baggage of the Greek system, so he settled on Egyptian mythology, choosing the god credited with teaching the ancient technology of agriculture to humans. Sweet then assembled an impressive group of student leaders. “When once launched, however, there became a need of finding out what it was to do,” Brooks wrote.

In stepped Dean Burton, who suggested that Osiris could help President Henry Smith Pritchett better understand MIT’s student body. Pritchett certainly needed help: Shortly after he was inaugurated in 1900, the annual “cane rush” competition between freshmen and sophomores had resulted in a student death. Pritchett then angered many students with his near-successful attempt to merge MIT with Harvard.

Ten MIT presidents and numerous deans and vice presidents would become honorary members of Osiris; full members included student government leaders and many editors of The Tech, most notably James Rhyne Killian ’26, who became MIT’s 10th president (see “Editor of The Tech becomes president of MIT,” MIT Alumni News, July/August 2024). 

Secrecy was so paramount that even using the name Osiris was discouraged.

Burton warned in 1907 that Osiris faced three big dangers. First, “the natural tendency for the meetings to lapse into merely social gathering of congenial spirits.” Second, the possibility that the society would become well known among undergraduates, who would seek to gain membership as a student honor. Third, the way proximity to power might limit the frankness of the discussions. The solution, Burton wrote, was careful guidance of alumni and honorary members to keep Osiris focused on its mission—and to keep its purpose a secret.

Secrecy was so paramount that even using the name Osiris was discouraged. In several letters that Paul E. Gray ’54, SM ’55, ScD ’60, then dean of the School of Engineering, wrote to Osiris member Gregory Jackson ’70 in March 1971, Gray refers to Osiris by the number 270. (Gray had been inducted as an honorary member in 1965 and would become MIT’s 14th president in 1980.) The number referred to 270 Beacon Street, the address of the University Club, where many Osiris members were inducted until the club moved to 40 Trinity Place in 1926. Later, Osiris initiations moved to the Club of Odd Volumes at 77 Mt. Vernon Street, a private club for bibliophiles of which Killian was a member.

“I joined Osiris in my junior year at a meeting of the entire group at a formal dinner at the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston,” recalls Tom Burns ’62, SM ’63. “At the time, we were asked to be somewhere in Boston in a tuxedo [and] were blindfolded and driven around for a while by a senior member of the Society, ending up at the Club to be confronted by a large group of faculty and student members.” (A written description of initiations in the 1960s says that tuxedo-clad initiates typically were told to perform a stunt­—such as flying paper airplanes in front of a ticket counter at Logan—while waiting to get picked up.) While two annual meetings were held at the club, Burns says faculty members typically hosted the regular dinner meetings, many in Killian’s penthouse apartment at 100 Memorial Drive. Student members were responsible for selecting the topics and leading the discussions, he says, and picked the next year’s inductees.

Of course, inviting many successive editors of the MIT student newspaper to join a society with such a secret purpose was inherently risky. Sure enough, on February 18, 1955, The Tech ran a front-page article with the headline “Student Leaders Meet With Administration and Faculty In Secret Society, Osiris.” The article was unsigned, as were all news articles at the time, but Stephen N. Cohen ’56, then editor of The Tech, appears on the Osiris membership rolls. (Tellingly, the next three editors—John A. Friedman ’57, Leland E. Holloway Jr. ’58, and Stewart Wade Wilson ’59—do not.) A week later, Eldon H. Reiley ’55, president of MIT’s Undergraduate Association, president of the Institute Committee, and a member of Osiris, published an 11-paragraph statement in The Tech saying, among other things, that “Osiris is an informal group of faculty and students who meet from time to time over dinner and discuss issues pertaining to the welfare and betterment of MIT. The group has no power in itself.”

Reiley wrote the truth: Nowhere in the archives or in interviews with surviving members is there a hint that the student members of Osiris decided anything other than the names of the next year’s recruits. 

Howard Wesley Johnson was inducted as an honorary member in 1965, shortly before becoming MIT’s 12th president in 1966. Johnson clearly took his Osiris duties seriously: Its meetings were entered into his appointment book, and when he missed the initiation in 1968, he wrote “to the men of OSIRIS,” apologizing that “business in defense of M.I.T. demands that I be absent.”

Johnson’s letter hints at the forces that ultimately put an end to the organization: Osiris was a relic of the past—for example, it had no female members until 1969—and MIT was under attack in the present.

“I was added in 1969 when I was vice president of the Graduate Student Council,” recalls Marvin Sirbu Jr. ’66, ’67, SM ’68, EE ’70, ScD ’73. “I remember how remarkable it was that students and faculty/administrators met and talked informally in the way that they did at Osiris meetings.”

Today Howard Johnson’s presidency is remembered for his deft handling of student unrest, including three days in November 1969 when more than a thousand people protested the Institute’s relationship with the US Department of Defense. The documentary November Actions includes film from meetings of a joint committee of faculty and students that helped defuse the situation. While many of the students were members of Osiris, they were present because they were elected student leaders, not because they belonged to the secret society. But Sirbu suggests that the Osiris meetings may explain why those in the room felt so comfortable with each other.

Handwritten minutes from two meetings in the spring of 1971 reveal that topics discussed included marijuana, civility in Osiris meetings, and the possible reemergence of McCarthyism on campus. An article in The Tech reported that topics such as research policy and housing were also typical. But Osiris was in decline. That March, Gray had observed that 34 people had
RSVPed “yes” for the March 16 meeting, but only 27 had shown up­—and that “actives” (student members) were outnumbered by “over thirties” by about three to one.

A few weeks before Provost Jerome Wiesner became MIT’s president in July 1971, a letter signed by Killian and Johnson went out to members asking for financial donations, signaling the end of the Institute’s financial support for Osiris. 

“At the end of my junior year, I was apprised by Dan Nyhart, then MIT’s dean for student affairs, that Osiris was in arrears to the Institute and needed to pay its debt,” recalls Lee Giguere ’73, who joined in 1972 with fellow Tech editor Alex Makowski ’72. 

“In those days—the early 1970s—the atmosphere was pretty radical,” he says, and accessing a “private channel to the powers that be” ran counter to his understanding of his role as a reporter. Although he remembers compiling a list of new initiates, there are no records showing that those students were ever invited to join.

But the exact date of Osiris’s demise remains unclear. Burns recalls a conversation with Frederick Fassett, former dean of residence, about the subject in the early 1970s. “He merely said that it had outlived its value, partly as a result of changes experienced in the 1960s,” he says. “I never received any formal notice of its end.”