Harvard Prank on Yale ‘Actually Succeeded’

Image via YouTube

Harvard students don’t care what Yale has to say—they think they were successful in pulling off yet another epic prank on their Ivy League rivals ahead of the annual football game between the two schools.

Earlier this month, Yalies let the cat out of the bag when they claimed that students caught kids in Crimson creeping around their Connecticut campus, posing as their counterparts during a fake protest where they tried to get people to sign petitions to boycott the New Haven school’s football team.

The Yale Daily News wrote:

Harvard students gathered on Beinecke Plaza Monday afternoon to protest Yale football and cause general confusion…the mock protest challenged the administration to divest from athletics in order to spend more money on various academic departments. The group then moved throughout campus, posing as Yale students and hosting satirical video interviews.

But despite the student paper’s claims that Yale undergraduates were onto what Harvard was cooking up—it was a sequel to a viral video prank they successfully pulled off in 2013 before the football match at Harvard Stadium— Julianna Aucoin, executive producer of the comedy group On Harvard Time, who put together the YouTube clip, said they nailed it.

“We definitely feel like we did,” she said. “We got a whole lot of people from Yale to do things from taking fliers, to listen to our pitch about banning the football team, to signing petitions.”

They even got one student from Yale to hold up an anti-football sign with them for close to 40 minutes. “I would absolutely say we pulled one over on Yale,” said Aucoin.

As for Yalies celebrating the idea that they stopped Harvard students mid-prank by spreading the word about their activity on campus before it got out of hand, Aucoin said they weren’t confronted by anyone until they were hours into their occupation on school grounds.

“It wasn’t really until toward the end of the day that there were some people who caught on,” she said of the video, which was put together by around 60 students, nine of whom went to Yale to film it. “It wasn’t until after the prank happened, and after we held the protest. People then figured it out.”

There was one confrontation, which was included in the video, where a Yale student recognized the Harvard actor from last year’s “Yale Tours” viral clip. But even when he was called out, the Harvard prankster stayed in character.

Aucoin said they’re waiting to see if Yale will respond with their own prank, and that their rivals have been sharing the Harvard video on social media.

“There’s usually a back-and-forth with all of this,” she said. “It’s all in good fun.”

You can watch the full video of this year’s prank on Yale below: