Harvard Open, Storm Brings Some Canceled Classes

UPDATED: February 3, 2015 at 2:55 a.m.

After another bout of snow dumped over a foot in Cambridge on Monday, some students and professors expressed difficulty in traveling to and around campus though the University remained open.

The storm arrived less than a week after winter storm “Juno” blanketed the area in a blizzard, forcing Harvard to suspend operations and prompting a reshuffling of the shopping week schedule. While students enjoyed winter festivities ranging from sledding to snowmen during last week’s day-off, both students and professors said Monday’s storm proved more an inconvenience than a welcome break.

Monday’s storm caused Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh to announce a snow emergency in Boston, and both Boston and Cambridge Public Schools were closed Monday and will remain closed Tuesday.

Although most Harvard classes met as scheduled, some were cancelled due to the weather. These included Religion 57: “Faith and Authenticity: Religion, Existentialism, and the Human Condition,” Statistics 171: “Introduction to Stochastic Processes”, and History 1290: “The History of the Russian Empire.”

Associate Professor Kelly O’Neill, who teaches History 1290, said that she cancelled class because she did not think she could travel to Cambridge in time for her 10 a.m. class.

“By 9 a.m. I decided there was no way I was going to be able to get to class,” she said, adding that for professors who do not live in Cambridge, traveling to campus poses a heightened challenge. O’Neill lives in Melrose, almost 10 miles away from campus, and said she has two young children who were home from school.

Another professor who cancelled class Monday, Natesh S. Pillai, who teaches Statistics 171, echoed O’Neill’s sentiments. He said that his commute from Wakefield, which is almost 15 miles from campus, may have been dangerous in Monday’s snowy conditions.

“It’s a huge commute, and I didn’t feel safe,” he said.

Though most students have a far shorter commute than their professors, some said Monday’s winter wonderland still was difficult at times, with some students slipping and sliding their way across campus.

“It was inconvenient trying to hop over the big piles of snow outside of Greenough,” Kamran M. Jamil ’18, said.

Camille J. Schmidt ’18, who recently tore her ACL and requires crutches, said she made her way to all of her scheduled classes despite the weather and her injury.

“Mostly, I had to hack through the snow,” she said, adding that most of the snow around her dorm had not been plowed when she left for class.

Yet for other students, the weather changed little about their daily schedule, and they went about their day as they usually would.

“Today, I did my p-set,” Andrew L. Gordon ’18 said.

—Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren.