Shortly before 5 p.m. this afternoon over 500 Yale juniors will file quietly into the courtyard of Branford College. This is Tap Day, the day when Yale's senior societies bestow on Eli juniors the highest honor or the deepest heartache that can come to a young man in New Haven.

Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Berzelius, Book and Snake, Elihu, and Wolfs-head, Yale's six societies, will claim 90 of the Eli's most "important" juniors. When quotas are filled, windows are slammed to indicate that the tapping has been completed, and the 400 or so juniors still in the courtyard begin to file out.