Despair settles over the Quincy House Junior Common Room as LESLEY M. CHIN ’04 and JAMES LI ’05 see the Red Sox fall to the Yankees in a tense, extra-innings close to the American League championship series.

“I can’t watch this anymore,” Georgie L. Konesky ’07 lamented as she left the Straus Common Room before Aaron Boone got up to the plate.

Moments later Boone belted a shot over the left field fence, ending a roller coaster game that left the Curse of the Bambino intact and much of the Harvard student body dejected and stunned.

The cries coming from the Red Sox faithful at 12:40 a.m. were among the only sounds on a somber campus. There were no parades through the Square, or triumphant toasts atop John Harvard.

Sinatra’s “New York, New York” blared intermittently from one Matthews dorm room, competing with Sox fans’ not-quite-polite attempts to silence Old Blue Eyes.

Stefan P. Jackiw ’07 of Boston summed up the feelings of a grieving fandom. “This sucks,” Jackiw said.

“I am shocked and awed,” added Neal Gupta ’07, Red Sox cap still resting firmly on his head.

The four-and-a-half-hour marathon, which drew the attention of both baseball fans and those just looking for a party, tested the willingness of Harvard students to forego sleep and work on a Thursday night during midterm season.

When Game 7 of the American League Championship Series began at 8:18 p.m. Eastern Time, Harvard common rooms across campus were filled with students, snacks and, in some cases, beer.

From House to House, room to room, the crowds were dominated by Red Sox faithful and otherwise ambivalent students who wanted the Curse to come to an end.

John W. Hastrup ’06 watched the game on Dunster House’s new big-screen TV. “I’ve sort of joined the Red Sox bandwagon,” Hastrup said. “It’s a lot of fun having the Sox here [in the playoffs] being in Boston.”

Hillary A. Moberly ’04, a Wyoming native, echoed Hastrup while attempting to finish her reading for Anthropology 138, “The Behavioral Biology of Women.” “I’m rooting for the Red Sox because they’re the home team now,” she said.

Although outnumbered, Harvard’s Yankees fans in many cases were not afraid to express their opinions about the outcome of the series.

“We [the Yankees] got it. It’s in the bag. It’s gonna be a great game,” Marc A. Parris ’06 of Mt. Vernon, N.Y. defiantly boasted before the game began.

After the Red Sox quickly put three runs on the board, Parris just shook his head. “We got time. We got time,” he said, staring at an already overdue Physics problem set. “If they do lose, I’ll cry myself to sleep.”

As the Yankees failed to score off Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens floundered, Red Sox fans grew more confident.