Yalie Co-Eds Disrobe in Harvard Stadium by Stephen Lendman
Saturday off-field antics inside Harvard Stadium perhaps attracted more attention than “The Game,” interrupting it at the end of the third quarter until things settled down.
The so-called 40-year tradition wasn’t part of my 1950s experience - including a part-time usher job in Harvard Stadium for home games.
Called the Saybrook Strip, named after a Yale Residential College, it involves male and female students stripping down to their underwear or altogether - an audacious prank any time, especially in chilly autumn weather.
An eyewitness tweet said “(g)ame being held up because there are a dozen Yale students standing atop a wall in front row. All are naked.”
Another tweet said “(t)he police are tackling naked streakers at the Harvard-Yale football game. (The naked people are, predictably, Yale grads).
No one was arrested. An earlier Yale Daily News account said:
“Neither rain, nor snow, nor the harsh New England weather can prevent another nude Yale tradition. For decades, the Saybrook Strip has entertained and shocked fans of Ivy League football.”
“It began in the 1970s, when a single Saybrook student mooned the opposing fans at the Harvard- Yale game. The next year, some of his friends joined him.”
“In the decades since these intrepid acts of anti-Harvard (or anti-clothing) rebellion, the Saybrook Strip has become a fixture at every Yale football game.”
Boys will be boys. So will girls. All in good fun? Hardly if freezing your butt off - making a fool of yourself at the same time.
As for “The Game,” Yale defeated Harvard for the first time in a decade - joy in New Haven, dismay in Cambridge.
It’s only a game! As a senior in 1955, Harvard lost the last game I saw at the Yale Bowl. Playing end, Edward (Ted) Kennedy, a member of my class, scored Harvard’s only touchdown.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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