The campers take their tents down a week before graduation, or Commencement in Harvard-speak. They believe there has been a peaceful resolution to their protest: no harm, no foul. They remove the tents without fuss so the University can proceed to set up its formal events. In return, their suspensions will be reversed so the seniors can graduate, and the rest can return to campus in the fall. President Garber has promised leniency, or so they think.

But has the University negotiated in bad faith? Although Garber’s May 14 email promises to expedite the protesters’ disciplinary cases, and he says he will ask all the Harvard schools to begin the reinstatement process for those put on involuntary leave, he never explicitly promises that they will be reinstated. And they are not. Instead, the Administrative Board — the College disciplinary body — suspends five students and puts more than 20 others on probation for participating in the 20-day encampment. This means that 13 seniors will not get their diplomas, including several Rhodes Scholars.

More than 1100 undergraduates sign a petition urging the College to overturn the sanctions. A majority of the professors present at a May 20 meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences vote to overturn the sanctions, claiming that according to University statutes, the Administrative Board is “subject to the authority” of the Faculty. The next day, more than 500 faculty and staff sign an open letter asking for the sanctions to be reversed.

During the actual Commencement ceremony on May 23, more than 1,000 people stand up and walk out. Most walk across the Cambridge Common to the Harvard-Epworth Church for an alternative graduation ceremony.

At the formal ceremony, two student speakers go off-script to condemn the sanctions. The Senior English Address speaker, Shruthi Kumar, tells the audience she is “deeply disappointed by the intolerance for freedom of speech and the right to civil disobedience on campus.” But the Ad Board, led by College Dean Rakesh Khurana, refuses to change its decisions, and the University backs it up. Or perhaps the University sticks to its decisions and the Ad Board backs it up.

Harvard Yard has hosted protest encampments many times before. The most famous occurred in 1969, when the University called in city police to arrest students occupying University Hall to protest the Vietnam War. The brutality of those arrests prompted a University-wide student strike. In 1986, students built a “shantytown” protesting Harvard’s investments in apartheid South Africa. For three weeks in 2001, as part of the Living Wage campaign, students camped in around 100 tents in the Yard to support others occupying Massachusetts Hall, where the University President’s office is located. In 2011, tents went up for Occupy Harvard. In 2014 and 2015, students blockaded Mass Hall demanding divestment from fossil fuels. In 2016, they held a sit-in supporting a dining hall workers strike.

Since the 1969 catastrophe, aside from one arrest in 2014 and some three-week probations, no serious sanctions were imposed on such demonstrations until this protest. Protesters and their sympathizers call this unprecedented degree of punishment “the Palestine exception”.

On Friday, May 31, the University holds the last of its large end-of-year events, Alumni Day. Hundreds of alumni used to form a procession on Commencement Day and march before the graduating seniors, but since COVID, alumni get our own day, a week after the students have all gone home. It’s a little odd to have such a grand procession with hardly anyone in the audience, a parade with no bystanders. Alumni are seated as we march in, filling the front rows and leaving most of the back rows nearly empty.

A friend says someone asked him why the alumni are having such trouble getting themselves into line. He answered, “Because everyone wants to be in front.”

Tiny bright green aphids rain out of the trees onto a multitude of crimson hats and gray heads. People wave red plastic clappers and flags, hold giant helium balloons, and wear red headbands with glittery pompoms on top, as though they had never worried about microplastics. My friend calls the excess of shields, banners, top hats and tails “Anglophilia”; a royal wedding would not seem out of place.

Just before President Garber stands up to speak, there is a commotion onstage. A young woman pours a vial of gold glitter onto his head, shouting “For the baby monkeys!” She is a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), unaffiliated with the University. She is arrested for assault and battery, trespassing, and disturbing a public assembly. Her cause has no connection to the movement against the Gaza War, except that it is also a cry against captivity, cruelty, and needless killing. When he begins to speak, Garber graciously tells the audience “I could use a little glitter,” and reaffirms the University’s commitment to free speech.

After that incident, the incursion of a couple of dozen pro-Palestine demonstrators is a bit anticlimactic. They walk up and down the aisles with banners and posters, but do not attempt to get on stage. They get loud boos and a scattering of applause. Nobody makes a move against them as they leave the Yard. I wonder if this demonstration was negotiated with the administration in advance, or if the security guards and admins simply know this group well enough by now to trust its commitment to nonviolence.

I run to catch up with the protesters. They stand in front of the Science Center for a while handing out pamphlets about the Gaza war and why Harvard should divest. Then they disperse. Nothing else seems to be happening. More student demonstrations will have to wait for this fall.

I go back to the Yard to get the free lunch.