Occupy Comes to Harvard

I exited the Harvard Square T station at 9:50 PM tonight, and told myself I’d be in my room doing homework by 10 PM. It is now 1:34 AM and I am sitting in a tent in Harvard Yard, trying to do my best to explain how I got here and what exactly happened in the past few hours. As I write, my thoughts go back to something my friend, a Crimson reporter, said earlier in the night—that there was no way to get all of this into one story. A multitude of groups, attitudes, and expectations converged on the Yard tonight. My own experience is fragmented and incomplete, but I will do my best to provide a coherent analysis of the night, and of the movement that will be here at least until tomorrow.
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A Facebook event advertising an Occupy Harvard General Assembly had been floating around for the past few days. Its debut at the same time as the largely unsuccessful and highly publicized Ec 10 walkout meant that for many students, the event was lost in the shuffle. When I walked into Occupy Harvard, two hours after the start of the event, a crowd of about 350 people had just been moved to Boylston gate on the grounds that had blocked traffic on Massachusetts Avenue.
Most of the gates into the Yard had been closed, and Harvard Police were on guard. At the time that I arrived, students were not allowed to enter or exit the south side gates. The situation remained fluid throughout the night. The crowd discussed possible action through the now-traditional General Assembly (GA) process of using a facilitator to reach consensus. Statements were slowly made and repeated through the People’s Mic. The options bandied around included moving to Cambridge Commons, the Science Center Plaza, or the area in front of the Holyoke Center. Quite a few participants suggested allowing Harvard ID holders to enter, so that they could join a GA already occurring in the Yard. The crowd included Harvard College students, but was largely made up of alums, graduate students, Cambridge residents, and general Occupy supporters. Posters and stickers with the slogan “We Want a University for the 99%” were scattered throughout the crowd.
Reactions from the students who were effectively locked inside the yard were mixed. Two students in running clothes, covered in Occupy stickers, continued jogging in place by a locked gate, evidently protesting the fact that they couldn’t get out. Meanwhile, a student in Wigglesworth expressed his displeasure by repeatedly proclaiming, “We are the 1%” with a megaphone. As the crowd responded by speaking louder, he switched to other slogans that were difficult to hear.
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Eventually it was decided that Harvard students would go off to the side with an alumni to find a way to enter the Yard. It was at this point when I first realized something that would occur to me at many points throughout the night—consensus takes a long time. A long, long time. The GA process includes temperature checks (using up-or-down spirit fingers to judge the sense of the crowd), a 75% minimum of crowd agreement to go forward, and the ability for any participant to “block” a decision, provided they can give reason to spark a discussion.  People rarely spoke just for the sake of speaking—a godsend to any student who has been in section for a Harvard class. Still, the constant back-and-forths to ensure actual consensus caused discussions to drag on.
A group of about 20 Harvard students, with the facilitation of a recent alumnus, discussed strategies for entering the Yard. Some groups, including the one I was with, decided to leave early and go forth alone. Because I walked a bit ahead, I was one of the three last students who were allowed in before the Science Center gate was closed. It remained locked until about midnight, when the GA inside the Yard ended.
The gathering inside was much smaller that that occurring outside of the Harvard gates. Participants stood on the grass directly in front of the John Harvard statue, talking as protest organizers set up tents in the center. At the time when I entered, a discussion using GA procedure was underway with Suzy Nelson, the Dean of the Office of Student Life.  The Dean requested that the tents be moved to Tercentary Theater, so as not to disturb students in the Yard. She repeatedly expressed a desire to work with the students, and to meet with a small group to explore ways to move forward.
Some students expressed concern that moving would lessen the impact of the movement. As the time dragged on, a consensus was reached that the tents would remain in the Yard for Wednesday night. A General Assembly was planned for Thursday the 10^th at 5 PM. Dean Nelson continued to express support for the students, and agreed to contact freshman living in the Yard, in case they wanted to give their opinion during the event. She also agreed to allow future meetings with the students to occur in a horizontal, “radical democracy” manner, a lá the GA.
A few freshmen proctors watching the proceedings in the yard expressed surprise at the extent of cooperation from the administration. All had stories of students in their entryways that were upset by the disruption.  And many expressed confusion as to what the students occupying the Yard actually wanted.
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And what do they want, at this point? As I asked the students in the tents around me, the answers wildly vary. Fair contracts for Harvard workers, a change in the way media affects society, a stronger social safety net. It is clear that while many students see Harvard as included in discussions on powerful corporations and the 1%, they are not here because of Harvard alone.  The students are showing solidarity with the larger Occupy movement, and part of doing that is gaining as much as media attention as possible. Hence the desire of the non-student groups to stay as visible as possible outside the gate, and the desire of the student protesters to take the coveted spot in front of John Harvard within the gates.
Now they’ve gotten media attention—and will get much more in the days to come, I’m sure—so what will they do with it? Does the fact that the protest is being carried out by Harvard students, in Harvard Yard, give the action legitimacy, or does it simply detract from the power of the larger Occupy movement?
I’m still actively evaluating how I feel on the “Harvard students are whiny trust fund legacies who like to think they’re taking action but have no actual legitimacy or need” argument. To some extent, solidarity is always appreciated in a democratic movement. But how genuine can it be? How many of our students come from families that are in the 1%? How many students here want to one day be in the 1%? Granted, they may want to do beneficial, social-minded things once they get there, but we’re all striving for success. We’re all still operating within the system that we claim to abhor. I have trouble reconciling the fact that we are actively partaking of the goods of knowledge and the privilege of academia, and yet we somehow want to rebel against it.
I’m open to being proven wrong. By all means, prove me wrong—I don’t have all the answers. If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here, now at 2:45 AM, in a tent in the chilly yard, pondering the motives and consciences of the students around me.
In the end, there is a sense of dissatisfaction. A privileged dissatisfaction to be sure—we have the luxury to take the time and protest. But somewhere, somehow, a large group of students at Harvard, of residents in Boston, and of citizens in this country became aware that the democracy they relied on no longer worked for them. And, lacking a super PAC or an IPO or a media strategist, they did the most direct thing they could think to do—they took to the streets. And against all predictions, seven weeks later, they’re still there. They are motivated by something strong enough to keep them there, even through snow and threats of eviction.
This goes beyond political parties—if it was just about the candidates running for election, this would be a largely electoral conversation. But the movement is not lending itself to working easily with the entrenched political game. It is demanding that all conversations start with no assumptions, no requirements, other than the desire for a better country—and those conversations are actually happening. For Occupy Wall Street, it has been seven weeks. For Occupy Harvard? We’ll soon find out.