Pitch invasion recalls 1981 tour
More than a hundred climate change protesters swarmed the field during halftime at the annual Harvard-yale football game yesterday, delaying the action for nearly an hour as students chanted ‘‘OK boomer’’ and police made arrests.
Players from both teams joined demonstrators on the field with orange wristbands, urging the two schools to stop their endowment of investment in fossil fuels and forgive Puerto Rican debt.
Protesters sat at the 50-yard line in New Haven, arms linked and chanting while some held banners.
A Yale spokesperson expressed disapproval of the tactics, while a Harvard representative said the school ‘‘respectfully disagree[s] with divestment activists’’ over how to confront climate change.
In New Zealand in 1981, antitour demonstrators invaded Hamilton’s Rugby Park, forcing the abandonment of the Springboks-waikato match.
Rugby Park was packed for the first Saturday game of the controversial tour, with more than 500 police officers in the city.
Protest organisers had bought several hundred tickets for the game, while several hundred more tore down a boundary fence and poured into Rugby Park from a nearby street.
Police arrested about 50 of them, but were concerned about their ability to hold back angry rugby fans. The drama was viewed live in South Africa and gave comfort to incarcerated opponents of apartheid, among them Nelson Mandela.
Green MP Chloe Swarbrick broke out ‘‘OK Boomer’’ in Parliament this month, stoking a new round of commentary on the Boomer v Millennial.
As officials asked the New Haven protestors to leave, another 100 students unaffiliated with the divest movement walked onto the field to join them, Yale student and Fossil Free Yale spokeswoman Sidney Carlsonwhite said in a phone interview.
‘‘This is an absolutely thrilling experience and we’re very excited about the support that it garnered from all over,’’ she said.
The protest quickly became a cause celebre among political figures.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, D-NY, hailed the movement, tweeting, ‘‘Activism disrupts the present to change the future’’.
Actress turned progressive activist Alyssa Milano added,
‘‘I’m proud to support the students of @Divestharvard and @Fossilfreeyale who disrupted #Harvardyale today to call for fossil fuel divestment.’’
Police arrested the protesters, who had planned not to leave the field any other way, Carlsonwhite said.
Organisers, who had been planning the on-field incursion since August, had lawyers standing by for students to call after being detained.
‘‘Being connected to a very powerful law school has its benefits,’’ Carlson-white said.
Harvard captain Wesley Osgbury, a senior defensive back, said that both Yale and Harvard are investing in industries that are ‘‘destroying our futures’’.
‘‘When it comes to the climate crisis, no one wins,’’ he said in a video released by the Divest Harvard group. ‘‘Harvard and Yale can’t claim to truly promote knowledge while at the same time supporting the companies engaged in misleading the public, smearing academics and denying the truth.’’
Videos posted on social media show demonstration on the field in New Haven swelling as more protesters took the field. Police officers escorted at least 50 people away, according to the Harvard Crimson.
New Haven Police did not immediately provide comment.
The Harvard-yale rivalry, nicknamed ‘‘The Game,’’ has been played 136 times in the schools’ history and annually since 1945.
Yale lead the series, 68-60-8, after beating Harvard in double overtime, 50-43. Including the delay, the game ran 4:40.
The students that remained at the Yale Bowl at the game’s closed stormed the field again – this time in celebration – as the game ended.
Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart said the university agrees with an Ivy League statement that the protest’s timing was ‘‘regrettable’’.
‘‘It is regrettable that the orchestrated protest came during a time when fellow students were participating in a collegiate career-defining contest and an annual tradition when thousands gather from around the world to enjoy and celebrate the storied traditions of both football programs and universities,’’ the statement read.
Peart did not respond to questions about arrests but said that the exercise of free expression is subject to conditions on campus and that ‘‘we do not allow disruption of university events’’.
Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane said in an emailed statement that the university would not comment directly on the protest or police activity.
‘‘Universities like Harvard have a crucial role to play in tackling climate change and Harvard is fully committed to leadership in this area through research, education, community engagement, dramatically reducing its own carbon footprint, and using our campus as a test bed for piloting and proving solutions,’’ she said.
Students at universities around the country have pushed their administrations to divest endowments from the fossil fuel industry over its role in climate change – with mixed success. Harvard leaders have argued that the university should combat climate change through its research, while Yale has divested partially.
Combined, Yale and Harvard have endowments of close to $71 billion, and many of the assets that make up those funds, demonstrators said, come from sources they find immoral.
‘‘Our education is funded at times by Puerto Rican debt, the fossil fuel industry and private prisons,’’ Carlson-white said.