Hundreds Of People Stormed The Harvard-Yale Football Game — And They Had Players' Support
A legacy showdown between rivals turned into something more on Saturday (November 23), any time hundreds of activists disrupted the Harvard v. Yale football game in New Haven, Connecticut. Forty-two people were eventually arrested,
the Associated Press reported, although not before making their requires heard: For both schools to
divest from fossil fuel industries, along with debt levied against Puerto Rico, as piece of their collective $70 billion endowment.
The face-off between the Ivies is known colloquially Because the Game;
according to the Harvard Crimson, it has been contained for 136 years. The groups
Fossil Free Yale,
Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, and the
Yale Endowment Justice Coalition spearheaded the efforts; per the AP, around 150 students initially recommended to storm the football field at Yale Bowl while in halftime, and over 100 more joined in once the protest kicked off. Activists also decried the treatment of Uighur Muslims in China,
the Yale Day-to-day News reported, and shouted "This is what democracy looks like!" And "
OK boomer." All told, the second half of the game was delayed by around 40 minutes,
according to the Connecticut Post.
In a statement to the
Yale Day-to-day News, Yale University spokesperson Karen Peart mentioned that while the school is "firmly for the correct to free expression," such expression is "subject to general conditions," and does not include disruption of university events.
"We stand with the Ivy League in its statement that ‘It is regrettable that the orchestrated protest came while in a time as soon as fellow students were participating in a collegiate career-defining contest and an annual tradition whenever thousands gather from around the world to adore and celebrate the storied traditions of both football programs and universities,’" she said.
Although such disruption was entirely the point, Harvard sophomore Ilana Cohen
told Teen Vogue. "The entire concept of The Game — this mock, sensationalized, ivy league rivalry between Harvard and Yale — really brings to light the sort of privilege these universities have, and that’s a privilege that has to be used in a responsible way," she said.
Vox notes that Harvard's endowment is the hugest in the world; it isn't immediately clear how much of its $39.2 billion, or of Yale's $29.4 billion, is directly connected to the fossil fuel industry, or any other industry with a direct impact on the climate crisis.
In 2018, the Intercept announced that Harvard had a $2 billion commitment with the Baupost categorize, a hedge fund that holds an enormous quite a bit of the debt levied against Puerto Rico; though Harvard students
protested the school and
urged a divestment that year, it isn't clear if the school heeded the call.
That discretion isn't acceptable to activists, whose
#NobodyWins platform includes complicated the universities to completely disclose, divest, and reinvest their holdings in the fossil fuel industry, putting an end to corporation as typical and taking meaningful action towards making a more just and stable future."
"To continue watching football games, kicking back, and perpetuating a unsustainable and fundamentally unethical status quo is something that we really wanted to grapple with and bring to light at this game through our actions," Cohen, a co-lead coordinator of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, explained. "Because ultimately, achieving fossil fuel divestment and achieving transformative justice…requires disrupting the status quo, and revealing the flaws that are inherent inside of the system."
In a video posted to Twitter, Harvard Crimson football captain Wesley Ogsbury, a senior at the school, noted that a few his teammates, along with players for the Yale Bulldogs, would wear wristbands in solidarity with the movement. "Both of our institutions continue to invest in the industries destroying our futures," he mentioned in the video. "Harvard and Yale can’t claim to truly promote knowledge while at the same time supporting the organizations engaged in misleading the public, smearing academics and denying the truth."
In September,
the University of California system announced it would divest from fossil fuels;
it had previously invested $150 million of its $70 billion pension and $13.4 billion endowment in publicly-traded agencies dealing in fossil fuels. At the time of the announcement, UC chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher credited the shift to UC students, who'd protested for years: "The students were the initial early warning system for us," he said.
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