I'll get to Emma Watson, a.k.a. Hermione from Harry Potter near the end of the post. I won't tease you, she was at the game as she is a student at Brown, and I did see her.
I have nothing against Harvard, I'd just rather work events at BC, which is a shorter and easier drive for me. Plus Duke never plays basketball at Harvard, Notre Dame never plays football there, and BU only rarely plays them in hockey. In other words, BC usually has much bigger events.
Harvard Stadium turned 106 years old this season. But it just recently added lights, and hosted its first night game in 2007. Since then, Harvard's opened its home season with a night game, this year hosting Brown.
Harvard Stadium at night is like some place that Scooby and the gang would go to in search of a group of zombies or something. The paranoid dweebs on Ghost Hunters would have a field day in there.
As I said, Harvard events are typically much lower key. Except this one. Which was one of the reasons I wanted to work it. Give a bunch of college students, even Ivy League college students, a Friday night football game, and there will be (high) blood (alcohol).
Now Harvard, similar to most events at BC, is much less security oriented, and more focused on customer service. The crowds are smaller, older, and much more self-controlled. Except when it's a Friday night and 17,000+ show up (the typical Harvard football game draws 7,000 or so).
At Gillette Stadium, I'm on a response team. There are no response teams at Harvard. There's no need for response teams at Harvard. But this Friday night, I was working for my normal roam team supervisor, as an usher.
I haven't ushered since June 6, 2008. That was when Brazil played Venezuela at Gillette.
I don't mind ushering, it can just be monotonous most of the time, and frustrating some of the time. 99% of the time, nothing unusual happens. And the 1% when the shit hits the fan, you've often got to call someone else to solve the problem.
That Brazil/Venezuela game, I wound up working in several sections, solving problems by myself. I never called my supervisor despite the occasional shenanigans I encountered. And that's when I decided to give the response teams a try.
Back to Harvard/Brown. I was an usher, but for the first half, my supervisor and myself became an ad-hoc response team.
I was officially an usher between sections 27 and 28. There are 37 sections in Harvard Stadium, and I found myself doing something in 18 of them at one time or another.
I cleared out kids from the upper seats from sections 20 to 31. I assisted other ushers with problems in sections 19-24. I gave ushers breaks in sections 25 and 26. And we made our presence well-known on the Brown side of the Stadium.
While ushering in 27/28, one poor dumb, inebriated Brown student stumbled through my section on the Harvard side. Lost, both in location and state of mind. He was handed off to the police.
After half-time, things in the Stadium had settled down. The alcohol had been discovered (or drank), and the hectic fray of the 1st half slowed into a nice relaxing melody. Which was fine with me, because the game turned into a real classic I-AA game, with Harvard turning a 14-10 halftime deficit into a 24-21 victory.
But there was one interesting moment for me before kickoff. That Hermione thing mentioned in the title and teased in the opening paragraphs of this meandering, wandering, listless stream of consciousness.
I was just walking down from my chute, on my way to toss out some gum. A flock of Brown students were noisily advancing through the concourse, making their way to their side of the Stadium. I hardly paid them any attention, apart from the normal scan-for-beers-in-their-pockets I always do (I do this 24/7 now, particularly at Bruins games, it's become habitual, even pathological. I can't stop giving ocular pat-downs).
After tossing out my gum and starting a new piece, a Brown student at the tail end of the flock approached me. "Yo what's up man?"
I rolled my eyes, and uninterested I responded: "Nothing."
"You know who Emma Watson is?"
"Yeah," I answered, suddenly remembering that she goes to Brown.
"That's her right up there, how cool is that?"
Lo and behold, there she was. She blended in with her fellow students so well, that had this overly excited wannabe frat boy hadn't been so thrilled to impress me, I wouldn't have noticed.
"Yeah, that's cool," I told to him, then went back to ushering.
No offense to Miss Watson, but seeing celebrities isn't too thrilling. Maybe my close encounter of the third kind with Tom Cruise 5 days earlier made celebrity sighting a been-there-done-that kind of thing for me. But I also remember that guarding Tom Cruise wasn't a big deal, and I was far from star-struck until he started talking to me. Then I malfunctioned.
So seeing Emma Watson walking by me was less than exhilarating.
But days after the event was over, I heard rumblings and rumors about things that happened to Emma at the game.
Excerpt from a post on LovelyEmmaWatson.com, which apparently from the title of their site, have never heard of that conversation between the black pot and black kettle, or at least ignored it. A site called "LoveleyEmmaWatson.com" criticizing others for obsessing over celebrity?
Emma Watson's hopes of being just another Ivy League student have been shattered. The "Harry Potter" star was stalked by Harvard students... Writers for the Harvard Voice who were Tweeting live from the game posted that they'd be "possibly stalking. Emma Watson, so keep your eyes peeled for that." And that they did, searching for the 19-year-old British actress... Tweets that followed read, ""Let's go Hermione! Lolz;" "In enemy territory. Lookin for a certain witch;" and "WATSON FOUND. I repeat WATSON FOUND."
The actress reportedly appeared shaken and had to be protected by security guards. Watson wanted nothing more than to fit in among her classmates, holding off on revealing where she would attend school until the last minute. She has even said, "I do hope that it will be only a short time before I am known as ‘Emma Watson, the student from the UK,' rather than ‘Emma Watson who starred in those Harry Potter films.'"
The Harvard Voice did deny "stalking" her, and did claim that the intensity of those Tweets were purposefully exaggerated. Nevertheless, they did go out of their way, at a football game, to find one particular fan among 17,000+.
To me, that constitutes stalking. Light and harmless stalking, but stalking nonetheless. But I'm not judging. To be honest, I don't care too much. Except, it was at an event that I was working.
There's a possessiveness I have about events. It's my event (in part), and I don't like my events going astray. If Miss Watson was being hounded/harassed, I wish we'd known about it. I know that we could have discouraged some/most/all of it and let her enjoy the football game just like the other 17,000 folks there. And I have Mr. Tom Cruise who can vouch for our skills in handling celebrities in crowds.
Game Photo Credit:
Dave Silverman/Harvard
