Several students from the Divinity School and Radcliffe announced yesterday the formation of a Youth Festival Committee to promote publicity and secure delegates for the Seventh World Youth Festival in Vienna this summer.

Headed by Walter N. South II 1D, the Committee is affiliated with the U.S. Festival Committee in New York, which plans to organize a delegation of 400 Americans, aged 16 to 35.

The Committee asserts that it is "free of any economic or political leanings." In promoting American participation, the group feels "that the World Youth Festival points a way for international understanding, that international understanding is the first step toward enduring peace."

The new Festival Committee has no connection with the Independent Service for Information about the Vienna Youth Festival, whose organization in Cambridge was announced in November. The Independent Service has stressed the fact that the Youth Festival is a Communist-sponsored event designed for Soviet propaganda. It has emphasized that Americans should be fully aware of the political and propagandistic nature of the Festival.

Sources at the State Department in Washington last night indicated it was unlikely that the Department would place any official ban on Festival attendance by Americans.

South and his Committee will accept applications until March 15 for the Festival at Box 109, Cambridge 38. The fee for room, board, and Festival events is $72.