Despite Snow, Junior Parents Weekend Will Proceed as Planned

Despite a series of heavy winter storms hitting the Boston area over the past few weeks, Junior Parents Weekend will proceed as planned, according to the the Office of Student Life. Parking availability is reduced due to the remaining snow, but weather forecasts predict a dry weekend and recent snowfall has been largely cleared from the Square.

“[W]e are in good shape, and are planning to move ahead with all of our events,” Jennifer H. Chapman, director of parent programs at the OSL, wrote in an email.

Many parents of the class of 2016 will come to campus this weekend to experience life at Harvard through a variety of scheduled programming.

The Junior Parents Weekend schedule lists programs ranging from sports games to faculty presentations, and many student organizations on campus are hosting events to welcome parents.

The weekend officially starts Friday morning at the welcome center in the Cambridge Queen’s Head, where parents can pick up their schedules, campus map, open class listings, and parent buttons, among other resources, from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m.

At 3 p.m., Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana will give a welcome address at Sanders Theatre.

Parent buttons will allow families to enter many Harvard museums free of charge, including the Harvard Art Museums, Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology.

Student performances will also be occurring throughout the weekend, including Ghungroo 2015 in the Agassiz Theater and “Stranger” in the Loeb Drama Center.

Some student said their parents are not coming to campus for Junior Parents Weekend, while others expressed excitement for the weekend’s events.

Meena K. Boppana ’16 said she was excited for Ghungroo 2015 and glad that her parents would get to attend.

“It's nice that they schedule it during Junior Parents Weekend,” Boppana said.

In preparation to welcoming their parents to campus, some juniors were scrambling to clean up their dorms and ensure a presentable living space.

“My roommates and I did a whole cleaning sweep on our room today because it was foul,” Dorothy A. Atkinson ’16 said.

Atkinson joked that she and her roommates cleaned up the remnants of a pre-game “to make it look like we’re actually students here.” Atkinson added that she was looking forward to a junior parents tea hosted by her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta.

—Staff writer Samuel Vasquez can be reached at samuel.vasquez@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @svasquez14.