Harvard Sadder Than Ever
It wasn't supposed to be like this. In preparation for the "The Game" vs. Yale on 11/17, Harvard students were to design a bunch of killer t-shirts and then choose the best one. Orderly hordes of students in rad threads watching Crimson pull out a win. Yeah!
Too bad these shirts are some of the most awful things we've ever seen. They're funny, but funny in a bad way. Part of it is their amateurish production, and part of it is their reliance on tried-and-true sources of humor like multiple-choice questions, dipole moments, and transfer applications.
After the jump -- the worst of the submissions.
UPDATED: Apparently voting is open to the public. Go vote for what you think Harvard students should be wearing.
There aren't enough punctuation marks in the world to make this soulless parody of a human conversation work. Also, "crumble up"? Was the story baked into a cookie?
Look, it's the cover art for a shitty middle-school rap album somebody made with the graffiti-brush in MSPaint during computer-lab. The red symbolizes the blood of slit-wrist Wunderkinds.
Ooh, an asterisk -- how scandalous. I would love to hear the words on this t-shirt vocalized by someone trying to sound like a badass. "Quite...a...bit."
Because nothing says school spirit like a crude drawing of what appears to be a frightened bulldog skullfucking John Harvard.
I mean who doesn't appreciate a good SAT joke?
An open letter to whoever made this shirt. You need to take a look at your life and evaluate the choices you made that brought you to this point.
Next time you try to write a bitchy letter, maybe leave out the cutesy handwriting and posterboard style block-lettering.
Yale: "Even if we do lose, at least we won't be wearing lame shirts which rationalized our loss before before we even had a chance to lose."
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October 20th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
not that game tshirts are EVER that funny, but jesus- at least stick to the tried and true mediocre ones instead of making yourselves look like retards…
October 20th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Let’s just say that Yale has a MUCH better selection.
October 20th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Wow, these are awful. Like, they really make me want to cry.
October 20th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
yeah, as a harvard student, i was shocked at the awful quality of the shirts this year. the one i bought last year just said “FUCK YALE” on the front, then on the back it said “and fuck harvard too. lets get drunk!”
thats a quality shirt showing my apathy towards both schools
October 20th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
The Crimson are going to get torched. What’s that? The game’s at the Yale Bowl? Yeah, things won’t be pretty for the Harvard men on Nov. 17th. The Elis are damn near unbeatable this year.
I wish I could say the same thing about the Lions, but that’s another (sordid) story. Just wait until basketball season!
October 20th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
I remember when the Crimson magazine published an entire edition dedicated to why yale was better than harvard (11/20/03), then ended the article with one of the most pitiful counter-arguments I’ve ever encountered:
“The flip-side to this argument is, of course, that Harvard students will be rewarded for their hard time in Cambridge with the singular Harvard diploma. Would it be asking too much to not only be able to love the name on your diploma but the experiences behind it? The administration seems to think so. But isn’t wanting it all part of what makes us Harvard students?”
If you go to Harvard and like it, then great for you. But I seriously pity all of the harvard kids who are forced to rationalize spending the four best years of their life in unmitigated despondency.
Ivygate: You should bring back some kind of discussion on this gem: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=350153
October 20th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
these t-shirts are atrocious; everyone at harvard agrees, except the overeager freshmen who made them. the ones that were mildly funny were left out of this post.
also, y’06, way to co-opt an article that tries to address student mental health into something to talk up your school. and pulling things out from four years ago? really? come on now. new pres, new deans, entirely new student body. so get some new material.
October 20th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Frankly, h’08, I’m pretty skeptical that things have changed substantively from the characterization presented in the article. And I didn’t “talk up yale” in my post. I just pointed out that the receipt of a “harvard degree” is a pitiful rationalization for four years of misery. There are obviously those who disagree.
October 20th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Also, the comment that the article is about “mental health” at Harvard is absurd. Its clearly about student attitudes and feelings towards their schools, and the reasons for those attitudes.
October 21st, 2007 at 12:25 am
Nobody outside Yale or harvard cares about some douchey football game. However, Dartmouth just creamed Columbia at the Homecoming game.
October 21st, 2007 at 12:41 am
Just to put this out there, the school sponsored contest for these shirts ALWAYS results in lame shirts. That’s because these shirts are being given away by Harvard Administration, and are therefore subject to the administration’s censorship.
The GOOD H-Y shirt designs will come out in two or three weeks - they’re designed and sold by student groups, and therefore are 1) a lot more inappropriate and 2) a lot funnier.
October 21st, 2007 at 4:19 am
I thought the last funny person to go to Harvard was Conan O’Brien.
October 21st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I actually believe the shirt featured before the jump is a reference to 300, not a rap album.
October 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I certainly enjoyed the fact that the second to last one got the date wrong…
October 21st, 2007 at 10:25 pm
If anybody wants to vote for the shirts, here’s a public link to the voting sites:
http://post.harvard.edu/hcf/html/hcf_und_tshirtvotenow.html
I’m surprised Harvard made this public. Sucks for them.
October 21st, 2007 at 10:57 pm
everyone has to go vote! GO! NOW!
October 21st, 2007 at 11:09 pm
I really hope the chemistry shirt wins. Easily the most pathetic.
October 21st, 2007 at 11:18 pm
y10- you’re a champion. let’s all vote for the skullfucker tee!
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:11 am
all the designs are terrible, not just the ones featured here. the only have decent one is rock ‘em sock ‘em robots.
although i demand that a picture of the game crossfire be put on the back.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 am
Well, ignoring that Yale won the game, I saw more than a few Penn kids with T-shirts sporting the Bulldog logo and the slogan “99 Problems But A Bitch Ain’t One”.
Quite possibly my favorite Ivy t-shirt since “I wouldn’t root for Princeton if they were playing Iraq”
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 am
Last year some yalies had:
I went to the Game and all I got was sober
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
My good friends at Yale’s Community Health Educators had this one:
Harvard: Almost as Much Fun as Abstinence.
Although my favorite might just be, “Harvard Sucks. [reverse] Princeton Doesn’t Matter.”
Or possibly the delightfully retro “Harvard Students. Princeton Boys. Yale Men.”
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
Who said there were good ones not posted here? Are you smoking crack, or are you just congenitally humor-deficient? Every single shirt on that voting site is abominably bad.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:14 am
I cast my vote for the reporter-editor-reporter one. It is colossally lame. I would just *love* to see the cantabs wearing it come Game-day.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Even the Army-Navy skits and shirts are funnier than those, and those guys don’t have nearly as much downtime to sit around and think of t-shirts. That rivalry is much more heated though (and usually a better game to watch).
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I guess the lesson that we learn from this miserably failing jokes is that its just impossible to make Harvard look cool
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
those shirts are mostly terrible, but the band’s shirt from last year ( http://www.yalehurts.com/ , click the bulldog to see the back) will be on sale again this year in addition to a new design.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
there was a good one last year that said
JE SUX
Harvard Swallows.
if you are a yalie, you’ll understand.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:05 pm
You deliberately left off some of the better t-shirts. I liked Pale Yale and the Rock’em Sock’em Robots shirts.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I think the last funny guy to go to Harvard was JFK. Smart, funny and likely never wore a THE GAME T-shirt.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
I think the last funny guy to go to Harvard was JFK. Smart, funny and likely never wore a THE GAME T-shirt.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I think the last funny guy to go to Harvard was JFK. Smart, funny and likely never wore a THE GAME T-shirt.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 pm
just pitiful . . .
October 25th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Penn played Yale for homecoming this year too. (I go to Penn.) Our shirts were better than these pieces of garbage. They had a picture of the Yale bulldog and said “Penn: 99 Problems but a b*tch ain’t one.” You know how Harvard makes fun of Penn students a lot? Well, we’re apparently a hell of a lot cleverer than those students.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
I didn’t realize J.E. still sucked. (Bladderball ended a long time ago….) Does Durfee still suck?
On topic, in my day, “Harvard Sucks” or “Fuck Harvard” were the slogans of choice. Quite inventive, we Yalies.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
There’s this:
http://www.newcollegebeat.com/yeah1.jpg
October 26th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
There’s this:
http://www.newcollegebeat.com/yeah1.jpg
October 26th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Yale had a hilarious Borat shirt last year…I’ll have to pull mine out to remember the text.