Protesters used maps, decoy
Students at Yale Bowl trained in nonviolent direct action
NEW HAVEN — Detailed planning, practice on Yale Bowl’s field, training in nonviolent protest and a decoy led up to Saturday’s 40minute disruption of The Game with Harvard.
Police gave summonses for disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, to 50 protesters. Two were also arrested, one charged with disorderly conduct and firstdegree trespass, the other with firstdegree trespass and interfering with police. Actor Sam Waterston of the Yale class of 1962, who took part in the protest, wasn’t on a list of people who received summons provided by police.
The sitdown on the field, led by the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition and Divest Harvard, was in protest of the universities’ investments in fossil fuel companies, investment managers who hold millions of dollars in Puerto Rican debt stemming from devastating hurricanes in 2017, and other issues.
Addee Kim, a junior from New York who was “deeply implicated in the strategy,” said 11⁄2 months of planning included studying online maps of the Bowl, training with experts in nonviolent direct action protests, practicing running onto the field and jumping over walls.
A total of 148 students and alumni from Yale and Harvard were willing to be
arrested and were trained in how to respond to police. Kim said some officers treated protesters roughly, with some being picked up and thrown on the ground.
“I was grabbed in a way that I felt very uncomfortable with,” Kim said.
Police pressed a Taser against another protester, though it was not used, she said
However, those who sat on the field were only one part of the overall protest.
“There was a lot of people
for whom risking arrest was not an option,” Kim said, including international students whose visas would be put at risk. “It was important that everybody had a role that was important to them.”
Leading chants from the stands, protesting outside the Bowl and reaching out to alumni were among the tasks given to those who weren’t willing to be arrested. Another student acted as a decoy and ran down the tunnel used by the visiting team, “a fake action … to draw attention away from the staircases,” Kim said.
The coalition members displayed five large banners on the field during the protest, managing to get them into the Bowl, where security checks are set up at the gates. “We had an ally ... who was able to bring those banners in” when carrying in equipment, Kim said.
The arrested protesters were brought through the visitors’ tunnel into an area outside the Bowl, where others were rallying and chanting.
Kim said the size of the crowd on the field appeared to be at least 300, with many additional students and alumni joining in “in complete solidarity and very high awareness for the things we were demanding.” The newcomers caught on to the chants quickly, Kim said.
This was the first time the Yale coalition had planned a protest with another university, although members have received support from schools such as the University of Puerto Rico in previous actions.
“It was really great to make that connection and see how at the end of the day we’re all complicit in the system … and we’re accountable for holding our universities responsible,” Kim said, calling the connection with Divest Harvard a “binding agent.”
Harvard University freshman Connor Chung, of Bethlehem, N.Y., one of the students who rushed the field Saturday, said that, as the minutes ticked down to halftime, he was anxious about how the protest would play out. “This was the first action we had done of this scale,” he said. “So that was kind of terrifying.” But being on the field was “a powerful experience,” Chung said.
“Surprising endorsements” came from far and wide, Kim said, with social media support coming from Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, U.S. Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, DN.Y., environmentalist Bill McKibben and philosopher and political activist
Cornel West. Members of the Yale and Harvard football teams also expressed solidarity with the protesters.
According to the Yale Investments Office’s Ethical Investment Policy, the office “has asked Yale’s Endowment managers not to hold companies that refuse to acknowledge the social and financial costs of climate change and that fail to take economically sensible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Concerning Puerto Rican debt holdings by Baupost, which the coalition says is Yale’s fifthlargest investment manager, holding almost $1 billion in debt in 2017, Yale’s website says its Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility “concluded in January 2018 that divestment from Puerto Rican debt is not warranted when an investor is abiding by the applicable legal framework in a process in which the debtor’s interests are appropriately represented.”
The ACIR decided against divesting from private prisons, despite concerns that profit and incarceration are “fundamentally misaligned goals,” deciding that, as an investor in private prisons, “the University should support appropriate, reasonable, and wellconstructed shareholder resolutions related to the improvement of operations of private prisons and the disclosure of political contributions and lobbying activities.”
Harvard’s endowment, the nation’s largest, totaled $40.9 billion on June 30. Yale’s stood at $30.3 billion, thirdlargest after the University of Texas’ $31 billion.
Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart commented Sunday that “[Yale] Athletics will continue to collaborate with Yale Police to ensure the safety of everyone at our athletic events.”
Chung, who wasn’t one of the protesters who received misdemeanor summonses for disorderly conduct, said he’s unsure whether he’ll be disciplined by Harvard for his role.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Chung said. He added that Harvard and Yale have long been outspoken advocates of free speech, and that he hopes that attitude extends to students staging a protest for a cause they believe in.
After the protest, held at the end of halftime, Yale won 5043 in double overtime. Yale tied for the Ivy League championship with Dartmouth.