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Why Occupy Harvard Failed By Wyatt N. Troia Published: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 Occupy Harvard has failed. It achieved some progress in promoting ethical investment, higher wages for Harvard workers, and scaring Goldman Sachs recruiters, but Occupy has utterly failed in a social movement’s most important goal: garnering public support. Far from it, students reacted to Occupy with general annoyance and disdain. Occupy never expanded beyond a small coterie of undergraduates, a larger contingent of graduate students, and some campus workers. Why? Occupy apologists have sought to explain the movement’s failure by faulting the student body. In Slate, Dylan Matthews argued that Harvard students rejected Occupy because they are part of the 1 percent, saying that students take “great exception to the idea that they might occupy a place of privilege.” Crimson columnist Anita Joseph insisted that it was rather because Harvard students are goody two-shoes who “rarely question authority” and don’t have “rebellion . . . in [their] blood.” While both explanations have some merit, they fail to account for just how little support Occupy was able to gather. As Matthews has pointed out, the Harvard student body is relatively affluent. Still, there are many students from working- or middle-class backgrounds that Occupy failed to gather under its banner. Joseph is surely right that, usually, you don’t get to Harvard without playing by the rules. But, as she notes, Harvard is still a very liberal place. A campus poll would undoubtedly find strong support for higher taxes on the wealthy, Dodd-Frank, and health care reform. Harvard students are open to change. They rejected Occupy not because they are closet conservatives, but because the movement incompetently promoted its agenda, much of which liberal students likely support. The fault for Occupy’s lack of student support lies not with the student body, but with Occupy itself. Occupy suffered from several fatal flaws in its executio