When the Harvard Sailing team van pulls up to our regattas, we immediately look out of place. Everyone but our team is wearing matching team gear. My teammates are sporting unbranded sweats, jackets, and shoes—all Harvard logos out of sight. We seem far from a Division 1 Varsity sports team arriving to compete.
Many students opt to keep a “low profile” about the Harvard brand to avoid being regarded as obnoxious, or even vain, for showcasing our highly exclusive and elite school. But if we want to further our support for student-athletes and enhance our sense of community, we shouldn’t be afraid of how we are being perceived.
A member of Harvard’s Alpine Skiing team, Matt Ryan ’25, said, “We have a lot of team pride and camaraderie in general because we’re such a small team on campus.”
Conversely, a member of the Varsity Sailing team, Sarah Burn ’24, explained that her hesitation to wear team gear stems from the emphasis that sailing places on competitor perception.
“If we showed up in head-to-toe matching Harvard Sailing Gear, people would see it as obnoxious,” Burn added. “It’s better to be a little low profile.”
The school’s innate exclusivity and association with the elite can instigate a negative public response.
A 2022 survey conducted by the Harvard Political Review asked 130 Harvard students if they hesitate to reveal the fact that they go to Harvard. On a scale of 1 (being strongly hesitant) to 5 (being very proud), respondents reported feeling an average of 2.63 out of 5. Further research reported that “undergraduates wear at least one piece of Harvard apparel an average of 1.44 days of their typical week, with one third of respondents reporting that they never wear Harvard clothing.”
Aside from the annual Harvard-Yale football game, where thousands of students and alumni support their teams donning branded gear from head to toe, the athletic culture at Harvard drastically differs from that of most American universities. Large state schools, where the multibillion-dollar industry of collegiate football draws tens of thousands of fans each week of the fall football season, and even some smaller, liberal arts schools with strong athletic teams, like Duke University, generate a strong sense of school pride through spirited dress.
As a result of our relatively low emphasis on sports and outwardly exclusive perception, this trend is hardly present at Harvard. It even affects those loosely associated with the school community.
“At first my dad was hesitant to put a Harvard Field Hockey sticker on his car,” said Elle Freedman ’25. “But then he thought, ‘I shouldn’t be afraid to publicly celebrate where my daughter goes to school. She goes to Harvard and I’m proud of that.’”
Should we hide any pride in our school to preserve our humility to the average passerby? Though student-athletes might fear that wearing a simple sports team shirt will trigger stereotypes of pretension from the public eye, we have a right to be proud of attending and playing for Harvard. And for student fans, wearing that hoodie you bought at the COOP around and outside of campus reflects your support for our teams and unites us all through the one thing we have in common: the Harvard name.
Alexandra Dorofeev ’25 (alexandradorofeev@college.harvard.edu) writes Sports for the Independent.