Rain Dampens Pre-Game Events

Rainy weather has thrown a kink into the festivities leading up to Saturday’s Harvard-Yale Game, prompting the cancellation of yesterday’s pep rally and the relocation of Saturday’s tailgate from Ohiri Field to an undetermined location.

The new tailgate location will be announced online at www.thetailgate2006.com and www.college.harvard.edu by noon today, according to an e-mail sent to the student body by Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 yesterday afternoon.

“The tailgate is not being canceled. It’s just being relocated,” Campus Life Fellow John T. Drake ’06 said. The new location will be on the Boston side of the Charles River, Drake said, and the same alcohol and tailgates rules for the Ohiri Field tailgate will apply to the new location.

Drake did not specify which locations are being considered, but Lowell Allston Burr Resident Dean Ryan M. Spoering sent out an e-mail to Lowell students yesterday saying that the tailgates would be located in “parking lots near the stadium, not at Ohiri mudpit.”

The Harvard Business School open lot and the Pepsi lot, both located on Western Avenue, are two parking lots listed on www.thetailgate2006.com as parking lots available for game-goers.

Gross would not provide additional information as to the possible location of the tailgate.

“We’ll decide by noon tomorrow,” he wrote in an e-mail last night.

“We’re definitely planning on still doing our tailgate wherever we’re allowed,” said Cabot House Committee Co-Chair Daniel Gonzalez-Kreisberg ’07. He added that a smaller tailgate space than Ohiri Field “might make the tailgate more fun” for students.

Lowell HoCo Co-Chair Jonathan V. Brewer ’07 said that he was officially notified of the tailgate change from Gross’s e-mail and that his HoCo is “just going to try to go with the flow at this point and make the best of it.”

Yesterday’s pep rally was also cancelled due to forecasts of rain.

“It doesn’t make sense to ask students to stand out in the rain with electrical equipment,” Drake said.

College Events Board (CEB) Chair Tessa C. Petrich ’07 said she did not think the cancelled rally would cut into the board’s budget, unless there were “nominal” cancellation fees for the stage or sound system.

The pep rally would have been similar to last year’s, with the addition of a No. 1 fan contest and a parade of the Houses into the Yard. The plastic megaphones and noisemakers meant for distribution at the pep rally will be given out instead at stein clubs or at the tailgate, Petrich said.

“We’re all very disappointed by the cancellation of the pep rally, but we’re really excited about the tailgate and game,” she said.