Talk:Seven Society (College of William & Mary)/Archive 1

Archive 1

References

The refimprove tag was removed without discussion, so I'm reinstating it and starting the discussion here.

Is there any way to find a reference for this society that's not a student newspaper? Are there histories of the College of William and Mary that might provide an independent perspective? How about administration records--something in the depths of Swem Library? Tjarrett (talk) 14:38, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The Seven Society (Order of the Crown and Dagger) is the most documented secret society at the College of William & Mary. Several of the newspaper articles mentioned were retrieved from Swem's electronic Special Collections archive. The activities of the society are also chronicled in several of the College's early yearbooks and mentioned on the College's new website in its Style section. Of the four William & Mary secret societies featured on Wikipedia, this article has the most comprehensive list of sources/citations, yet it is the only one that has received refimprove and tone tags. For organizations like these that have no official records available to the public, the university's oldest student newspaper and other student publications are the best available source for information about societies at William & Mary. (Genesis 2:2-3 (talk) 10:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC))

Thanks for the response. I'm still concerned about the fact that the society's existence is solely sourced from student media. Adding the pointer you mentioned from the university web site would help a little (I couldn't find it doing a brief search).

I'm still curious about histories of the school. I know that the UVA histories (Philip Alexander Bruce and Virginius Dabney) were tremendously helpful to me in compiling the UVA secret society articles.

You're probably right that this society was unfairly singled out. I'll go take a look at the other articles and see what we need to do there. Tjarrett (talk) 12:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Poem of the Seven Society and copyright

The "official poem of the Seven Society (OCD)" has been added to the page a few times. The source provided for it is a 1945 newspaper article. It has been removed because of the date. Since the date of publication was 1945, the copyright state of the poem is a little in question. Depending on the copyright status of the newspaper, the poem could be in the public domain or it could be copyrighted until 70 years after the death of the author.

If the poem is to be included in the article, I'd want some clarification on its copyright status. For more information on the relevant Wikipedia policies, see WP:COPYVIO and WP:PD, and this helpful chart. --Tjarrett (talk) 12:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Tjarrett, thank you for the info. This poem was written and submitted in 1945 as a response to a question posed by The Flat Hat staff: What is the College of William and Mary? The poem has not been copyrighted or printed anywhere else other than in this issue. According to the chart you provided, it fits into the "1923 to 1977, Published without a copyright notice" category. I will, however, change the wording to say that the poem has been "adopted" by the W&M Seven Society. Genesis 2:2-3 (talk) 16:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Ongoing Research

Extensive research is currently underway regarding the history of the Seven Society at the College of William and Mary. Edits to this article will continue to be made as more information becomes available. (Genesis 2:2-3 (talk) 16:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC))