Earlier this week--while some of Harvard's graduate schools closed due to snow--the College remained open, prompting questions and confusion among Faculty members.

Unsure if the College had cancelled their course meetings, Faculty members deluged the Office of the Registrar with "hundreds of calls," according to Associate Registrar Thurston Smith.

"The FAS never officially closes, but individual faculty members must decide whether they are able to get in," Smith said.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 wrote in an e-mail that he had made the decision to leave the Faculty free to exercise their own discretion after a discussion with Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

It is not "unreasonable to expect undergraduate students to walk to class since 97 percent of them are living on campus," Lewis wrote.

Lewis said that because Harvard is a residential college, "to a great extent there can be no such thing as a closing." Police, dining hall workers and maintenance staff all have to be here to take care of students.

"It's not too much to ask the Faculty to show up to teach if they safely can," Lewis said.

But Bernbaum Professor of Literature Leo Damrosch, who lives in Newton and has no access to public transportation, said that staff members often feel obligated to come in to work despite hazardous weather conditions.