Six Hurt in Yale Glee Club Bus Crash

Six members of the Yale Glee Club were hospitalized with minor injuries on Friday after two buses carrying the group to Harvard collided in New Haven, Conn.

The singing group was en route to Cambridge for its annual joint concert with the Harvard Glee Club before the 119th playing of The Game.

The concert went ahead as scheduled in Sanders Theatre on Friday evening, with nearly all members of the Yale group performing.

The accident occurred shortly before 1 p.m. as the buses entered Interstate 91 in New Haven, said Jieun Yang, publicity officer of the Yale Glee Club. According to Yang, one of the buses skidded into the other, which had stopped ahead of it, rear-ending the bus and causing significant damage to both vehicles.

“No one was hurt seriously, but everyone probably had some physical and emotional damage,” said Yang, who was on the bus that rear-ended the other vehicle.

“The front window was all shattered,” she added.

“They couldn’t open the door, so the fire department had to come open the door and cut out the front window,” Yang said.

Yang said her bus was where the more serious injuries occurred. She said two glee club members required stitches—one in the chin, the other in the lip.

The group chartered the buses from DATTCO, a transportation company based in Connecticut.

According to Edgar Flores, a dispatcher with DATTCO, the company’s fleet was overbooked on Friday, so the firm had to charter one of the buses from Double A Transportation.

Flores said the Double A bus was the one that rear-ended the other. Double A representatives were unavailable for comment yesterday.

She said DATTCO’s bus was “pretty damaged” by the accident.

Harvard Glee Club President Benjamin M. Schmidt ’03 praised Friday night’s performance but said the accident had an effect.

“Some of them didn’t get here until 7, so they didn’t get their normal rehearsal time,” he said.

“We tried to pull it together,” said Yang. “We had a pretty good performance, considering we’d been in a car accident.”Six Hurt in Yale Glee Club Bus Crash