Harvard Biology Lecturer Andrew Berry Sends Up Yale at Annual Bulldog Roast

At his annual ‘Bulldog Roast’ on Thursday before the 140th Harvard-Yale game, Harvard Organismic and Evolutionary Biology lecturer Andrew J. Berry poked fun at Yale University’s alumni, mascot, and residential life.

Berry began his roast, which was hosted by the College Events Board in Sanders Theater, with a jab at an incident in 2013, when a series of Yale students were surprised to find their laundry soiled with human feces — an incident that quickly made national headlines.

“This is the first reason Yale is inferior to Harvard,” Berry said. “People at Yale defecate in laundry machines.”

Berry — who teaches Life Sciences 1b: “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences: Genetics, Genomics, and Evolution,” the second half of Harvard’s introductory life sciences sequence — then moved on to the “one area” where he said he could offer expertise as a biologist.

“Let’s talk about Yale’s mascot,” he said. “Bulldogs, like trainwrecks and house fires, are hard to ignore.”

Berry gave a lightning tour through the history of the breed. Bulldogs, known for their aggression, were bred for bullfighting, he said. However, genetic deficiencies arose once bulldogs were bred as pets.

“Bulldog pups have to be delivered by C-section,” Berry said. He displayed photographs of Yale’s first mascot and his present-day successor.

“This is about 100 years of artificial breeding. That’s Handsome Dan One. And this is Handsome Dan 17,” Berry said. “This does not look like a dog.”

Berry ended his talk with hard facts. According to a model built by “ The Economist” to predict students’ future incomes based on characteristics of the college they attended, the median Harvard graduate out-earned the model’s prediction, whereas the median Yale graduate under-performed the prediction by nearly $10,000.

Berry noted that five U.S. presidents attended Harvard College, compared to only three who received their undergraduate degrees from Yale.

“Obviously we’re way ahead here,” Berry said, “especially if you consider that two of their three were Bushes.”

Harvard, Berry pointed out, boasts more than 160 Nobel Prize winners — compared to only around 60 from Yale.

Berry’s roast drew cheers, groans, and enthusiasm from Harvard students in the audience.

“It was absolutely entertaining. The quantitative proof that we are better than Yale was absolutely hilarious,” Ludmila O.N. Blackappl ’28, an attendee, said.

Before Berry’s roast, the Harvard University Band kicked off the show with classics including “ Ten Thousand Men,” “ Fight Fiercely Harvard,” and “ Yo-Ho.”

The band’s serenade was followed by performances from the Harvard Undergraduate Drummers Society, Radcliffe Choral Society and Harvard Glee Club, Asian American Dance Troupe, and Harvard Undergraduate Stand-up Comics Society.

Prisha N. Sheth ’28, an emcee for the event, said “it went absolutely amazing.”

“The spirit was great,” she added.

In an interview after the roast, Berry described the event as “one of the few occasions I know of where you can gather together a large number of Harvard students.”

“Maybe you are indeed bribing them with the offer of Game-themed merch, but regardless, you’ve got a large group of students who are here just to laugh and do nothing else,” he said.