As Harvard-Yale Approaches, Students Try to Get School Spirit Off the Bench
Last year, Yale treated Harvard students to a raucous tailgate before The Game. On Saturday, undergraduates are looking to repay the favor — but they have to contend with cautious administrators and a lacking sense of school spirit.
When Harvard students arrived in New Haven last year for the annual Harvard-Yale game, they encountered a host of parties thrown by campus fraternities and a raucous tailgate in the Yale Bowl parking lot.
This year, with Harvard playing host on a drizzly Saturday morning, some students worry that they might not be able to return the favor.
“When Harvard-Yale is at Yale, I would argue it’s so much more fun,” Folukemi O. Olufidipe ’25 said. “I feel like if Harvard wanted to, they could.”
It’s not just the weather, and it’s not for lack of trying. The Harvard Dean of Students Office, which coordinates College-sponsored social events, has spent months engaging students to host Spirit Week events and a sanctioned student tailgate that meets dual goals of fun and safety.
But some students, dissatisfied with the College’s school-sanctioned parties, are taking matters into their own hands.
For the second home game in a row, members of Harvard’s final clubs are coordinating an underground effort to throw an unofficial tailgate free of the College’s supervision, though the exact time and location is unclear.
More broadly, students are doing their best to emulate the rowdy spirit of a state school — taking their cues from @harvardstate1636, a student-led Instagram account promoting Harvard pride and advertising themed tailgates for sports games.
“I’ve been to one or two tailgates as a result,” said Olufidipe, who hails from Florida. “Coming from a state where there’s a big state school culture, it’s nice to bring that here and feel some semblance of school spirit.”
Many students say this patchwork school spirit results from an administration that fails to understand what students want out of their social life. But they also questioned whether the student body itself is capable of matching the state school energy.
“I don’t think Harvard will ever have the energy of any state school, ever,” Sophia A. Roach ’27 said. “It’s kind of antithetical to what Harvard is.”
The Crimson interviewed more than 70 students, athletes, and administrators about the do-it-yourself methods students use to bolster school spirit — and whether Harvard students have what it takes to truly let loose, even if just for one weekend.
The Harvard State of Fun
Sitting in the Eliot House dining hall his sophomore year, defensive lineman Kwaku O. Adubofour ’24-’25 thought about the “Barstool Sports” Instagram accounts that promote school spirit at other universities.
He decided to try to rescue Harvard’s school spirit with an account of his own, creating @harvardstate1636.
Adubofour’s effort has been at the forefront of a widespread student push to revitalize a culture of fun around Harvard’s sports teams. In starting the account, Adubofour said he hoped to recreate the energy at the first post-pandemic football games in 2021.
“Kids came out in numbers,” Adubofour said. “So I was like, ‘This should be how it always is.’”
In interviews, students said the account — which promotes tailgates, shares ticketing information, and spreads memes mocking Harvard’s opponents — was a welcome addition to Harvard’s sometimes-lacking social life.
“It is one of the leading online presences that influences school spirit,” Kai H. Reed ’25 said. “It makes me want to go to football games more. I’m just more excited about the school.”
Kyle A. Aucoin ’25, who plays on the men’s hockey team, said the @harvardstate1636 posts advertising themed attire — which in the past have included “tropical,” “blackout,” and “’merica” — are particularly exciting for athletes.
“Guys will talk about it in the locker room, and guys are happy,” Aucoin said. “If there’s a theme for the game, we’re like, ‘Oh there’s gonna be people coming, people are supporting us.’”
“It’s cool to know that you guys notice,” he added.
Another group has emerged as an unlikely champion of a widely-accessible Harvard-Yale weekend: Harvard’s notoriously exclusive final clubs.
Though some students criticized the clubs for the high prices of Friday night pregame parties — tickets to a final club-hosted party at Royale in Boston are currently listed for more than $100 — nearly every student interviewed for this article said they were thankful for the clubs’ tailgate in 2022, and hoped to see it revived this year.
“I think there will be an unofficial one,” Cody Chou ’25 said. “Realistically, I’ll be going to that one.”
Andrew J. Shaw ’24, the former president of the A.D. Club, pointed to the 2023 Harvard-Brown tailgate — organized by several final clubs, Abudofour, and Harvard Athletics — as an example of a successful, student-led pregame.
“By the time we got to 60 to 90 minutes prior to kickoff, it was just a sea of people dancing to music,” Shaw said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Harvard student body that hyped and in one place having fun — being a college student, ever.”
“We can look at Brown at Harvard from last year,” Shaw added. “If we can’t repeat that, what happened from the administration’s point of view that makes that situation not palatable to them to replicate for Harvard-Yale for this year?”
Tailgate Troubles
As far as the College is concerned, there is only one undergraduate tailgate.
According to a DSO email last week announcing the event, it’s going to be “the biggest pre-game of the year!”
“The undergrad tailgate will have live music, inflatables, face painting, custom merch, giveaways, food trucks and all of the lunch you could ask for,” the email reads. “Grab some exclusive swag, hit the 21+ bar and bring the energy before kick-off!”
But if the promotion was intended to assuage students’ concerns about the tailgate, it had the opposite effect.
“They were like, ‘You have three drink tickets.’ It was the most stupid thing I’ve heard,” A. Shahid Sial ’27 said, adding that he does not drink. “Even I know that’s nothing.”
“It almost turns people off,” Olufidipe said. “‘Face painting, bounce house sounds like a five-year-old’s birthday party.”
“They’ve made it so that students have to figure out their own,” she added.
As students increasingly take Harvard-Yale preparations into their own hands, DSO administrators say they cannot grant students’ wishes for a totally hands-off approach to the tailgate — which, they say, is tantamount to facilitating underage drinking.
“We will follow federal law,” Associate Dean for Student Engagement Jason R. Meier said in an interview with The Crimson last month.
So instead, administrators are working to generate hype their own programming, while discouraging unsanctioned — and illegal — behavior.
Dean of Students Thomas Dunne said in an October interview that he wants to avoid unsanctioned tailgates “popping up,” like they did in 2022.
“We need to be as clear and transparent as we can be with students, so that everyone’s making informed decisions and they’re not surprised when they all of a sudden start having an unexpected conversation with a state trooper,” he said.
Administrators, while planning these events, have tried to bring students into the fold. Dunne said earlier this month that he met with a final club representative, who wanted to discuss “how final clubs think about tailgate stuff.”
A College spokesperson wrote in a Thursday email that the DSO is “not aware of any conversation with a member of their department speaking with final clubs” regarding an agreement about space for an unofficial tailgate near Harvard stadium.
At the end of the day, according to students who have worked with the DSO, it’s the administrators running the show.
Thor N. Reimann ’25, Mather House Committee co-chair, said HoCos had limited input in this year’s tailgate.
“We gave them food recommendations, things like that,” he said. “They obviously were not giving us high-level decision making ability.”
As a result, students said, the office and its programming have become disconnected from students’ actual desires.
“Administration treats Harvard so much more like a boarding school when it comes to fun things,” Celia T. Rees ’26 said.“I feel like I’m 17, and my parents are watching.”
“The perfect undergraduate tailgate would be just a space where they say, ‘Okay, all of you undergrads just go over here and have fun,’” Hakeem “Tami” Kabiawu ’25 said. “EMTs around just for safety, but other than that they just let us be.”
Meier, in the October interview, said the DSO was doing its best within the constraints of the law.
“If people wanted a DJ and a band, we had that,” Meier said. “If people wanted food, we had that. If people wanted alcohol, we had that.”
“I understand wanting a really fun social situation, but there were guidelines that we were required to follow,” Meier added. “And so we’re here to find that balance.”
College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a Thursday email that “we are looking forward to an entertaining and competitive game on Saturday,” adding that the DSO welcomes feedback and input from students.
But even Senior Associate Director of Athletics Nicholas Majocha said successful social events need to be spearheaded by the students themselves.
“We know that if Harvard Athletics or Harvard College throws a party or a tailgate, no one’s going to come,” Majocha said. “It has to be promoted and organized by the students, so we’re trying to support those efforts with space and some resources, and then we’re trying to let the students really run the events.”
‘Put the Books Down’
Many students said that Harvard-Yale is the one day a year when undergraduates unite for a sporting event. Otherwise, school spirit falls by the wayside.
“You can definitely feel more excitement around campus during Harvard-Yale,” Brianna Chan ’26 said. “For the other games, you don’t really know that it’s going on until you see people going.”
Despite Adubofour and other students’ efforts to build excitement, some questioned whether it is realistic for Harvard to match the school spirit and energy of institutions like the University of Michigan.
“Even at Harvard Yale the stadium will be full, and the energy there is very different than if you watch SEC or Big 10 football games,” track athlete Marianne E. Mihas ’25 said.
At The Game in 2016, administrators complained about students’ reluctance to leave their tailgates and watch football. Meier said the low number of students who even make it into the stadium is “absolutely unacceptable.”
“You are there to support the Crimson, so go to The Game,” Meier said.
On the field, football player Oreck N. Frazier ’25 found the lack of enthusiasm noticeable.
“Two years ago at Harvard-Yale, I was a sophomore, Harvard-Yale here, our whole side was sitting down, it was like just a bunch of old people sitting down,” Frazier said. “It wasn’t hype.”
Frazier said he hopes to see more excitement in the stadium.
“This is just my personal experience having gone to 40 football games in my career — or 39, one more left — we need a louder stereo system,” Frazier said. We need the entire stadium to be booming. We need Mo Bamba blasting, third down.”
The lack of student engagement isn’t unique to The Game. For her part, Roach found it hard to focus on football at last year’s Harvard-Brown game, even after the successful tailgate.
“I was doing an Expos essay,” she said. “I hadn’t started it, and I remembered that I had it due, and I just brought out my laptop mid-game.”
Students and administrators said that students’ many commitments can make it difficult for them to invest in athletics.
Reimann said he doubts the attendance at Harvard-Yale can be replicated other weekends.
“I think it’s possible, but I think it would take more buy-in from people in a way that it’s just hard to do, because everyone’s pulled in so many different directions,” Reimann said.
But those in Harvard’s athletics scene said they feel school spirit is on the rise.
“Each year has gotten better with not just the outcome crowd-wise at Yale game, but throughout the other games as well,” football team captain Shane M. McLaughlin ’25 said. “It’s been amazing to be home and look up at the stands and say, like, ‘Damn, we got a good crowd today.’”
“It helps us out a lot,” he added. “We’re hoping that that state school energy does show.”
Frazier encouraged students to ditch the library and head for the stands.
“Yeah, you might be high-achieving, whatever,” Frazier said. “Put the books down for five minutes and have a good time.”
—Staff writer Madeleine A. Hung can be reached at madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Jo B. Lemann can be reached at jo.lemann@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jo_Lemann.
—Staff writer Azusa M. Lippit can be reached at azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @azusalippit or on Threads @azusalippit.