As many know, Harry Potter star Emma Watson decided to forgo traditional British universities in favor of an American university experience. She enrolled in Rhode Island’s Brown University as a freshman last month. Some gossip sites reported the details of Emma’s arrival and early comings and goings on campus, but for the most part, people kept a somewhat respectful distance. She seemed to genuinely want a normal college experience, telling journalists, “I want to be normal. I really want anonymity like everyone else.”
Unfortunately, the staff of the Harvard Voice didn’t get the memo. When Emma arrived on Harvard’s campus for the Brown v. Harvard football game, the Voice had set up an online stalking “game” for Harvard students:
Emma Watson probably won’t be returning to Harvard any time soon after being stalked in an orchestrated campaign of Ivy League harassment.
Page Six reported on Tuesday that the “Harry Potter” starlet and Brown University freshman looked “quite shaken” on Saturday as Harvard beat Brown 24-21 in Cambridge.
Watson was reportedly flanked by security guards to protect her from gawkers. But her discomfort was actually the result of a targeted campaign by the Harvard Voice student magazine to draw as much attention to her as possible.
Before the game, a blog post on the mag’s Web site said: “We will be Live-Tweetin’ the game and possibly stalking Emma Watson, so keep your eyes peeled for that, too!” A succession of tweets posted on the Voice’s Twitter account during the game followed, including, “Let’s go Hermione! Lolz,” a reference to Watson’s character in “Harry Potter.” It went on, “In enemy territory. Lookin for a certain witch,” and, “WATSON FOUND. i repeat WATSON FOUND.”
The Harvard Voice also posted a picture of Watson on its Web site and proclaimed its stalking mission a “success.” Some readers were furious. “There is a locatable cause of Watson’s experience at Harvard Stadium and a blameworthy party,” read one online rebuke. “Anybody can do anything unfeelingly to anybody in this day and age, especially if they feel imbued with entitlement from membership in Harvard College.”
The Voice eventually attached an editor’s note to its post of Watson’s photo, saying, “There seems to be much ado about nothing over this photo and liveblog. Understand that these live tweets were made to be intentionally outrageous and overblown.”
Voice editors didn’t respond to requests for comment. A rep for Brown said, “This isn’t the sort of thing we comment on.” Watson’s rep couldn’t be reached.
[From Page Six]
Jackasses. It’s not funny, it’s just creepy and gross. Poor Emma. Although, I have to say, if she really wanted the average, normal American university experience, creepy and gross sort of comes with the territory. That being said, she’s just a kid, and she’s made it obvious that she just wants to be left alone. I hope the editors of the Voice get slammed for this big time.
Emma Watson is shown at the Burberry show at London Fashion Week on 9/22/09. Credit: WENN.com
Unfortunately, it is totally unsurprising that a bunch of self-important frat boys thought that was funny. Poor kid.
ugh – leave the poor girl alone.
Way to pick on a young woman who’s minding her own business and isn’t a fame-whore.
Apparently they don’t teach manners at Harvard.
PS: Harvard offers courses in “Entitled Asshole Behavior”.
I agree Kaiser creepy and gross come with the college experience! Although Emma’s harassment is on a much larger scale, I had a stalker my sophomore year of college. Somehow this creeper got keys to my apartment and let himself in. My roomate was like uhh what are you doing here? He said he was looking for me and left. She told me the story because it was weird that he let himself in. Nobody besides the two of us had copies to the keys. He left, but came back a week later. He just walked into the living room without knocking or anything. We called the cops, it turns out our keys had been stolen from the management company and never reported! Needless to say, we moved junior year.
Birdie – CREEPY! I would have peed my pants a little.
Birdie – Oh, God, that’s terrible! What’s worse is that so many campuses don’t have a police force capable of properly dealing with genuine threats and stalkers.
My experience wasn’t the traditional “stalker” thing, but the guy was really creepy and gross. He did everything he could to get close to me, and even tried to emotionally blackmail me into going on a date with him. *shudder*
That is absolutely horrible! Having experience with a stalker myself, I definitely feel for her and wish her the best.
See this is why people get shot. I’d shoot them. Not because they were being assholes but because they were irritating me like ticks.
Poor girl.
She’s not a famewhore, and she just wanted to see the football game.
I think she is so pretty and so respectable. The header pictures are stunning.
they did sound to me like they were overblowing it on purpose to be ridiculous.
I would probably e mail my friend “Im stalking Hermione!” if I was at a game where I knew she was.
Extremely jealous because she chose Brown over Harvard. Obviously made the right choice!
purlease.she only got in cause of Harry Potter and they weren’t CREEPY stalking her just teasing her a little. she deserves it- she stole some deserving persons place AND i’ve met her and she called a UKsize10/USsize6 FAT! cow
oh Sarie, grow the F up.
Harassment, anyone? Nice to know that’s how you treat your guests..
Uh…she got in cause she’s really smart and can pay for her tuition.
Maybe I just haven’t read about many stars attending college, but it seems that when they do they always go ivy league. This is totally off-topic but do they get in because they actually made excellent grades in their studies, or do they get in because they’re rich and famous? I’m genuinely curious.
Going to Harvard doesn’t (and never has, btw) mean you have any smarts!
Not creepy as much as rude and disrespectful. If they were trying to parody the paparazzi, they succeeded.
Wow Sarie, you sound insanely jealous. And I do mean INSANEly 🙂
Emma got A-level in her school in England and her parents are attorneys who went to ivy league colleges in the UK…so i say that when it comes to Emma it simply wasn’t that she was famous. She comes from a family where they care about academic achievement.
agree with u there Cas.