Yale Daily News

Students staying on campus for the Yale-Harvard Game this year may notice several new protocols and traditions put into practice for the classic matchup.

Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin colleges will host Harvard first years on the Friday night before the Saturday game, joining the tradition of Harvard College residential houses establishing relationships with Yale residential colleges to house each other’s students for The Game. Additionally, the student tailgate will now last two hours — the time limit that Harvard employs at its own tailgate — instead of the three and a half hours Yale previously allotted.

Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarríbar also notified students on Nov. 1 that no outside alcohol will be allowed inside the student tailgate village. Instead, all alcoholic beverages at the tailgate will have to be purchased in advance and distributed by a third-party vendor at the tailgate site the morning of the game.

“This is just to minimize the need for large vehicles and transporting and just the general kind of chaos that happens with tailgates, so I think it’s a good system,” Yale College Dean Marvin Chun told the News. “Our main goal is safety, but also enabling people to party but in a safe way.”

Lizarríbar told the News that the new tailgate policy will allow students to have fun and stay safe. The policy applies only to undergraduates at the student tailgate village, as opposed to personal tailgates hosted in the parking lots of the Yale Bowl.

Tyler Bleuel ’19, the events director of the Yale College Council, said this year’s changes posed new obstacles to the YCC as it planned the tailgate, but that hurdles are to be expected for any new policy. He added that he sees how the new policy will ultimately streamline the tailgate process for Yale Athletics.

For instance, Bleuel noted that no one on the YCC events committee is 21 or older, and thus no one on the committee would be able to pick up their tailgate’s alcohol order on Saturday morning. As a result, Bleuel and his peers had to find someone of age to pick up the alcohol for the tailgate.

Students interviewed who plan on attending the tailgate see the new policy as an unnecessary pain for undergraduates planning tailgates.

“Having to order your own alcohol is a bit of a hassle,” Alex Lindsay ’19 said. “It’s undeniable that people under 21 drink, but Yale’s making it harder … being a bit lenient is probably a better thing.”

Students took less issue with the shortened tailgate hours. Lindsay said students will just spend more time at “pregames.” Another student, Woods Connell ’20, said he had never planned to spend any more than two hours at the tailgate anyway, so was not concerned about the change.

Harvard first years were quick to jump on the opportunity to stay overnight at the new colleges. According to a story in the Harvard Crimson, Harvard first years were notified last Thursday that 80 members of their class would be allowed to stay overnight in the common rooms of Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges this Friday night. All 80 spots were claimed by Tuesday.

Each of Yale’s other 12 residential colleges is paired with a sister house at Harvard. Head of Pauli Murray Tina Lu said she is excited that Yale’s new colleges will be involved in this historic tradition.

“Head [of Benjamin Franklin College Charles] Bailyn and I both felt very strongly that we wanted to have the PauliMurs and Franklinites involved in the same kind of long standing exchange that other Yalies get to participate in during the weekend of the game,” Lu said. “We’re happy to host, it just made sense since there are only 12 Harvard houses — it made sense for the yard to get split up between the two of us.”

Because of a leak in the Pauli Murray common room, Lu added, the 40 Harvard students scheduled to stay at the college overnight Friday will instead sleep on yoga mats in the college’s buttery, if not in suites volunteered by Yale students.

Since the first Yale-Harvard football game in 1875, Yale has won 66 games, Harvard has won 59 games, and eight games have ended as ties.

Britton O’Daly | britton.odaly@yale.edu