New Beer Draws Harvard Ire

A new beer with the brand name Harvard is hitting the streets, and the Harvard administration isn't savoring the news.

Launched by the Lowell Brewing Company, which already makes the microbrew Mill City Beer, Harvard Beer is a "mainstream American lager" that its brewers hope will have mass appeal.

The only stumbling block is the Harvard Trademark Office, which does not approve of associating Harvard with an alcoholic beverage.

No lawsuits have been filed, but University attorneys have been in touch with the attorney from Lowell Brewing Company to express Harvard's distaste for the beer's name, said Deputy General Counsel Robert B. Donin.

"I think some officials here thought long and hard about the confusion that underlies an alcoholic product with the name Harvard on it," said University spokesperson Alex Huppe.

Martin D. Finnegan, the company's marketing manager, said the beer has "nothing to do" with the University in Cambridge.

A beer company in Lowell used the name "Harvard" from 1898 until it closed in 1956, so the new larger represents the resurrection of an old Lowell tradition, Finnegan said.

"We did it simply on the history of our city," Finnegan said.

The beer comes after a year when university officials across the country increasingly cracked down on underage drinking following the death of MIT first-year Scott Krueger.

"We as an institution want to make it very clear that we prohibit the use of alcohol by those who are under legal age and we discourage the use of alcohol in general," Huppe said.