Yale's "We Suck" prank

On November 20 2004, at the annual Yale-Harvard football game, Yale students used a card stunt to trick more than 1,800 Harvard fans into holding up placards that spelled "WE SUCK."

Michael Kai and David Aulicino, two Yale students from the Class of 2005, created and coordinated the plan. Disguised as the "Harvard Pep Squad," they and twenty classmates handed white and crimson placards to fans — mostly Harvard alumni, with a few faculty, students, and others — in the central area of the Harvard side of the stadium. The group told the crowd that by lifting the placards they would spell "GO HARVARD." The placards were actually arranged to spell "WE SUCK."

Execution

There is no "Harvard Pep Squad"; Kai and Aulicino invented it for the prank, which they set in Boston on the assumption that Harvard fans would more easily be caught off guard at home.

Kai and Aulicino designed and ordered placards, megaphones, war paint and "Harvard Pep Squad" T-shirts, and forged Harvard student IDs for "Pep Squad" members. Weeks before the prank, they traveled to Harvard for the Cornell game to map the seat layout of the stands.

The two planners kept the prank among a trusted few and only revealed the prank to the Yale participants on the last day to avoid leaks. Participants were chosen because they were unknown at Harvard, but as an extra precaution, they had each participant paint his/her face in bright red war paint. A mild alarm was raised by students who realized crimson, not bright red, was Harvard's color, but the prank proceeded anyway.

On game day, the Yale Band smuggled the placards onto the Harvard side, along with recycle bins labeled "Discard Placecards Here." With IDs in hand, the "Harvard Pep Squad" infiltrated the stands and quickly endeared themselves to Harvard fans. Meanwhile, the duo's photographers recorded the events on both sides of the stadium.

Most of the Harvard student section, sitting to the placards' left, did not see the placards at all. Many Harvard fans left the stands not knowing what had taken place. In fact, many of them did not know they had been duped until days later.

But the Harvard football team witnessed the prank and soon began spreading the news. [ESPN documentary on the Harvard-Yale Rivalry, featuring the "We Suck" prank, December, 2005.]

The aftermath

Harvard responds

Initially, many at Harvard maligned the incident, while others denied it happened. [cite news | url = http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=504781 | title = Yale's Brief Shining Moment | first = M. Aidan | last = Kelly | work = The Harvard Crimson | date = 2004-12-02 | accessdate = 2007-09-10 ] In response, Kai and Aulicino registered the domain name "harvardsucks.org" (as well as "yalesucks.org" in a preemptive move) and posted the video. [ [http://www.harvardsucks.org/video_hi.html Video of the incident] ] Chuck Sullivan, Harvard's director of athletic communications, said " [It was] all in good fun." ["New York Sun", Dec. 1, 2004]

Some Harvard partisans criticized the pranksters because most of the 1,800 placard lifters were older, more gullible alumni. Afterwards, in an interview with Harvard, Kai and Aulicino said members of the Harvard Band were complicit with the Yale pranksters. When Harvard published their remark, the Yale duo responded, "Now, who is gullible?" ["New Haven Register"]

A Spring, 2007 piece from the Harvard Satyrical Press claims that the photo used above and widely distributed has been doctored [cite news | work = Harvard Student Press | url = http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hsp/index.php?id=120_YaleWeSuckPrank | title = Harvard Claims Photo Doctored | date = 2008-08-15 ] . A screencap from the video shown at Harvardsucks.org suggests that the HSP claim is accurate. The prank result seen in the video essentially resembles the "undoctored" version shown on the HSP site.

Media and Internet coverage

"We Suck" drew national and international attention, with mentions in newspapers, radio programs, "Jimmy Kimmel Live", MSNBC, and several other TV shows. Several magazines have listed the prank among the greatest in college history. [cite news | work = The Economist | title = From Hermes to bonsai kittens | pages = pp.82–83 | date = 2005-12-24 ] [cite news | work = Sports Illustrated | title = Pranks for the Memories | pages = p. 36 | date = 2005-12-12 ] [cite news | work = Maxim | title = Ivy Beleaguered | url = http://www.maximonline.com/articles/index.aspx?a_id=6214 | pages = pp. 20–21 | date = February 2005 | accessdate = 2007-09-10 ] [cite news | work = FHM | title = Harvard Gets Pranked! | pages = p. 30 | date = March 2005 ] [cite news | work = PCFormat | title = Sportsmanship HARVARD SUCKS | pages = p. 30 | date = March 2005 ] The "Maxim" article says Yale perpetrated "the greatest prank this side of the Mason-Dixon line since the Boston Tea Party... to the eternal pride of rival Yalies ...and caused dozens of stoic, blue-blooded Harvard men to spit port wine all over their smoking jackets." "Sports Illustrated" featured the prank with "some of the best attempts to get the other guy's goat." ESPN and ESPN2 featured the prank in a 15-minute documentary on the rivalry. Many blogs worldwide linked to the site. iFilm showed the video for months.

Apparently, the phrase "We suck" initially deterred some coverage. Even now, many sources use names such as "The Yale-Harvard Game Prank of 2004" to avoid using "We suck."

imilar pranks

This prank was an echo of the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961, in which cards were altered to spell "CALTECH" rather than a reference to either of the two schools competing.

On August 24, 2007, Kyle Garchar, a student at Hilliard Davidson High School in Hilliard, Ohio, and two friends, Daniele Jewell and Jen Trimmer, students at Hilliard Darby High School, copied the prank at the schools' football game at Columbus Crew Stadium. The students received three-day in-school suspensions and were banned from after-school activities for one semester. [cite news | work = Columbus Dispatch | url = http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/08/30/prank.ART_ART_08-30-07_A1_447OMJ8.html?sid=101 | title = War of words in Hilliard - Senior pays for 'legendary' prank | date = 2007-08-30 ]

References

External links

* [http://www.harvardsucks.org/ Harvardsucks.org] , website maintained by the pranksters
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ99ScGdQv0&NR=1 A video of the event]
* [http://www.harvardsucks.org/song.html The "Harvard Sucks" song]