On December 5, 1776, a group of young men, students of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, meeting in the Apollo room of the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, formed the Phi Beta Kappa society, which they dedicated to high purposes with eighteenth-century eloquence. Chapters were established at Yale in 1780 and at Harvard in 1781, which ensured the perpetuation and propagation of the society when the parent chapter became inactive. During the following half century, four more chapters were founded: at Dartmouth in 1787, at Union in 1817, at Bowdoin in 1825, and at Brown in 1830. At the end of a century of growth, twenty-five chapters had been founded.
In 1883, the national body, the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, was organized. At present there are about 290 chapters.
In 1875, the society extended the privilege of membership to women. In 1926, the 150th anniversary of the society's birth was made the occasion for raising an endowment fund and for exploring ways of encouraging scholarship in the educational institutions of this country. The Society now continues, well into its third century of existence, as the beacon of academic excellence and the symbol of scholarship in the liberal arts. In 1971, in recognition of this University's eminence in the liberal arts, the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa approved the chartering of this chapter, Psi of New York.
The original Phi Beta Kappa at William and Mary was a secret society. But as a result of anti-Masonic agitation in the 1830s, most of the chapters followed the lead of Harvard and repealed that injunction of secrecy. They retained, however, the medal or key with its symbolic engraving, which can be purchased from a company selected by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
The present key, except for its smaller size and the lower stem added by the branch at Yale, is substantially the same as the original medal of the first chapter at William and Mary. It bears, on the obverse, the Greek letters, Phi Beta Kappa, the initials of the words Philosophia Biou Kubernetes, meaning "The love of wisdom is the helmsman of life." In the upper left corner, three stars symbolize the aims of the society; Friendship, Morality and Literature. A pointing hand symbolizes aspiration. On the reverse, the letters S P represent the second name of the society, Societas Philosophiae, the society of the love of knowledge. Below them is the historic date of the society's founding, December 5, 1776, above; the name of the member is inscribed.