NEW HAVEN, Conn. — In the hours before the 141st meeting of the Harvard and Yale football teams Saturday, a vast and raucous tailgate party sprung to life across grassy fields on the Yale University campus. Students and alumni dressed in Harvard crimson and Yale blue played cornhole, grilled chicken, devoured bagels, swilled Pabst Blue Ribbon and drank wine straight from the bottle.
Sticking out only slightly were Regina Schwartz, a Harvard alum, who was dressed as a turkey (an informal Harvard mascot); and Erica Newland, who graduated from Yale and its law school, cosplaying as a Yale bulldog, inside a full over-the-head mask, like a superhero impersonator working for tips in Times Square.
Their mission amid the revelry: Persuading partying football fans to “stand firm against attacks” on higher education, as their handouts said.
“Do you want to stand up for academic freedom and the First Amendment?” Schwartz asked a group of students, shouting above a cacophony of portable sound systems, each playing songs with different beats. “How would you feel about doing that?”
“Good?” came one reply.
The tailgate evangelists from the two schools set traditional rivalries aside for the first Harvard-Yale football game since the Trump administration embarked on its campaign to remake American higher education and strike deals with schools that accept the White House’s priorities.
The groups — “Crimson Courage” and “Stand Up for Yale” — co-sponsored a party tent at the tailgate, under a banner reading “Foes on the Field, Allies for Academic Freedom.” They collected signatures on a petition urging leaders of both schools to reject agreements with the Trump administration that would bring the government’s hand into running universities.
The Harvard-Yale football matchup has deep significance for Newland. Her relationship with her husband began at the 2006 game in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she said, when she drank too much Manischewitz, and he walked her to an ambulance. She seemed unsure about sharing the story for the record, but then decided it would be “the wedding announcement I never got in the Times.”
Though Yale has so far largely avoided the close scrutiny and sanctions from the Trump administration that other schools have experienced, especially those in the Ivy League, Newland said all universities are stronger if they present a united front.
“Hang together or hang separately,” she said.
Of course, Harvard and Yale are within the Ivy League bubble, separated by their enormous wealth and influence, which could make it difficult for them to persuade other schools to risk a loss of federal funding to stick up for universities that seem to have every advantage.
University leaders across the country have signed an open letter against “government overreach,” and schools have filed amicus briefs supporting Harvard in its legal case against funding cuts by the Trump administration.
Around midmorning Saturday, as the tailgate revved up, Crimson Courage co-chair Miles Rapoport, a former secretary of state of Connecticut, pointed into the crowd and asked, “Hey, is that George Conway?”
Wandering past the tent was indeed Conway, a lawyer and one of America’s most vocal anti-Trump activists. He graduated from Harvard in 1984 and Yale Law School in 1987, and he was there Saturday to watch football with two old friends. Rapoport smoothly intercepted Conway and redirected him to the tent, where the lawyer gamely allowed himself to be plastered with Crimson Courage and Stand Up for Yale stickers.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was the celebrity ringer for the petition campaign. A graduate of Harvard in 1967 and Yale Law School in 1973, Blumenthal acknowledged that cooperation is not a natural state for schools in perpetual competition for grant money, staff members and students.
Many college administrators are also inclined to keep their heads down when others face pressure, hoping to avoid attracting the attention of the Trump administration.
“There’s real fear,” Blumenthal said. “I’ve urged them — there is strength in numbers.”
A spokesperson from the Trump administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Blumenthal tested out his pitch on members of the crowd for support for the petition. The 79-year-old senator plunged into a mass of 20-somethings, many of whom were drinking from red plastic cups.
He approached a group decked out in Harvard gear.
“You came down here from Boston?” he asked. “Can you stand up for Harvard? Can you stand up for academic freedom?”
He proffered postcards and stickers, like a magician offering to perform a trick — take a card, any card.
“No Yale stickers,” one of the Harvard men said. He was for academic freedom, but some lines could not be crossed on game day.
“Get back to your fun,” Blumenthal urged.
“There is no fun under fascism,” said Isabel Adler, 26, who is studying public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Blumenthal probably handed out as much literature as any of the volunteers. It may be a mark of the current conditions in Washington that, at one point, he said to no one in particular, “This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
As for the game, Yale upset Harvard, 45-28.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.