While it is unclear what effect, if any, either Occupy Harvard or the new movements have had in influencing policy, this year’s activism has gained greater community support.

First, the organizers of the referenda were able to accumulate the number of student signatures necessary to include their topics as referendum subjects on the UC ballot. When these referenda went before voters in the Undergraduate Council election last November, all three passed by significant support: 72 percent of student voters supported divesting University funds from the fossil fuel industry, 80.5 percent voted to establish a social choice fund, and 85 percent wanted to reconsider the College’s sexual assault policies.

And although administrators have indicated that they will not divest from fossil fuel companies, they did grant divestment advocates sit-down meetings with University President Drew G. Faust and members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body—two conversations that Occupy Harvard protesters were never granted. While Welton acknowledged that conversation does not necessarily translate into results, divestment activists have claimed that the meetings are a step in the right direction.

In this landscape, students say, the tents of Occupy Harvard are a distant memory.

—Staff writer Christine Y. Cahill can be reached at christinecahill@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @cycahill16.

—Staff writer Ginny C. Fahs can be reached at fahs14@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @ginnyfahs.