Students Battle Crowds and Chaos to Retrieve Bags After Loss Against Yale

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Harvard affiliates described scenes of disorder, dense crowds, and medical emergencies during post-game bag pickup outside the Yale Bowl on Saturday in what they characterized as a hazardously mismanaged process.

Students and alumni told The Crimson that a line of nearly 500 people was funneled into a tightly confined holding area as fewer than a dozen staff members appeared to work the bag distribution desk.

Many said they waited more than two hours without significant movement in the line as more than two dozen Yale Public Safety officers were dispatched to direct additional students into an already congested space. At least six Yale University Police Department officers later arrived to assist the YPS officers.

“This is Yale Public Safety, but there's nothing publicly safe about this,” Maria “Bimba” I. Carpenter ’26 said. “If you had claustrophobia, it would probably be a nightmare.”

A YPS officer said YPS was not scheduled to participate in the bag-return process and blamed the delays on a private security company, G Force Security, that the officer said was leading the system.

“We’re just picking up the slack,” said the officer, who was granted anonymity to speak to The Crimson because of YPS’s policy against speaking to the media. “It’s a lot of confusion, and we don’t really know what went wrong here.”

They added that YPS was called in nearly two hours after bags began to be returned.

“Yale University worked diligently to manage the large number of fans after the game as safely and quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the University’s public safety office wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

“There were in excess of 30 staff assigned to the bag claim area. Yale is grateful for the cooperation and patience of the many attendees,” the spookesperson added.

A spokesperson for G Force Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Students were initially able to reclaim their bags by showing a colored ticket with a unique number, which they had been given at the time they dropped off their belongings. But after two hours of sustained delays, Yale cut that system entirely around 4:45 p.m. — just minutes after YPD officers entered the area — and allowed students to enter directly into the building in small groups where bags had been stored.

Several students reported witnessing their peers experience panic attacks and an asthma attack.

“I just started pushing people back to protect the people who were having panic attacks,” David D. Dickson ’28, a former Crimson News editor, said. “Some people were getting a little too close. 
They were like sniffing my neck.”

Students also reported frustration with being unable to access water and medication from their bags. One student experiencing an asthma attack was rushed to the front of the line to get her inhaler from her bag, according to students at the site.

“My feet are tired, I have not eaten. I can’t even drink water because they said put all the water containers inside,” Christina Adja ’29 said. “I need to take my iron supplements — I’m tired.”

Harvard Dean of Students Thomas Dunne, who watched the scenes unfold, declined to comment when approached by a Crimson reporter, saying that he wanted to speak to his counterparts at Yale to gather more information.

After the game ended shortly after 3 p.m., many students were scheduled to head back to Cambridge on buses at 5 p.m. through a program run by Harvard — a tight timeline many said exacerbated the situation. Several buses departed after 5 p.m. and waited for the Harvard students still in line.

“Everyone’s worried they’re going to miss their bus, so they pack in more tightly and it gets even worse,” Ari M. Gold ’29 said. “Some people were crying, people were scared. 
We were like penguins.”

As they waited in the congested line, members of the victorious Yale football team, students said, taunted them, smoking cigars and blaring music on loudspeakers while yelling at them to “go home already.” Yale beat Harvard’s previously undefeated football team, 45-28, hours earlier.

Franklyn H. Wang ’22 described the situation as “dangerous” but said that the experience ultimately affirmed his school pride.

“This just proves Harvard is the superior school. We have a bag line that works,” he said.

​​—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.