For a Statistics 104 final project, a group of students asked 1,035 undergraduates to gauge their impression of Occupy on a scale of one to ten, with ten being most positive. They found that the average ranking of Occupy Harvard was 2.84 out of 10. Many Occupiers attributed the movement’s chilly reception on campus to what some called an “anti-protest culture” at Harvard. They theorized that this mentality was a result of Harvard students’ success within the current system.

“One explanation is that in order to get to Harvard, you have to be very good at playing the game and have a strong belief that the system is meritocratic,” said occupier Jennifer A. Sheehy-Skeffington, a teaching fellow in psychology. “That selects for the kind of people who do not look for solutions that are extra-systemic—it’s threatening to have a group come along and challenge that altogether.”

Eric J. Weiner, senior editor and director of communications at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, said that Harvard students do not fit the profile of typical occupiers.

“In terms of Occupy itself, it’s talking about a fundamental unfairness in our global economy that’s real and getting worse,” Weiner said. “Harvard is not necessarily a reflection of that.... It’s hardly a microcosm of the United States.”

Other Occupy Harvard members attributed students’ negative reactions to the University’s lockdown of Harvard Yard, which they say students unfairly blamed on Occupy Harvard.

“They closed the gates, and a lot of students’ gut reaction was to blame the protesters,” Bayard said. “I think that, to a certain extent, the administration did a smart move.”

The administration said concern for student safety, not desire to vilify the occupiers, motivated the decision. In an email to the Harvard community, University President Drew G. Faust cited police reports that some of the protesters attempting to enter the Yard on the first night of Occupy Harvard had engaged in “violent behavior elsewhere with the explicit goal of causing disruption and with little connection to any particular cause.”

Faust’s message, sent nearly two weeks after the occupation began, was the only communication from Harvard administrators to the entire community regarding Occupy.

Despite the University’s assertion that closing the gates was a safety measure, occupiers felt that the increased security violated Harvard’s principles of free speech.

“I was deeply disturbed that my University had locked the gates in order to prevent others in the community, from janitors to sympathetic organizers at Occupy Boston, from joining our protest,” Shafer wrote in an email.

Occupiers also complained that Harvard’s leaders did not engage in dialogue with them as much as they would have liked.

When the protesters first pitched their tents, Dean of Student Life Suzy M. Nelson reportedly promised to attend a general meeting of the movement the next day.

“I would like this meeting to be the beginning of a conversation,” Nelson said at the time. But she did not attend the meeting the following day.

Yet despite occupiers’ complaints of lack of access to administrators, many Harvard officials said they wanted to let the protesters voice their views.

“We tried very hard last fall to hear the concerns of the occupiers, to make sure they had freedom of expression to articulate their views and to balance that with the safety concerns for the rest of the campus,” Faust said.