Harvard has ordered 16 students to leave the University because of their participation in the sit-in Dean May's office November 19.

The Interim Committee on Rights and Responsibilities announced its decision yesterday, but did not reveal any of the students' names. It labeled the demonstration "an unambiguous 'obstruction' in the most serious sense of the word."

Two students have been "separated" -one until January 1972 and the other until February 1971. Separated students can return to the University only on a majority vote of the Faculty.

Fourteen others have been "required to withdraw" for periods ranging from six months to a year-and-a-half. They may return to Harvard at the end of their period of discipline with the approval of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities.

The action by the nine-member committee-which has exercised disciplinary powers for the Faculty since September 30-was the first punishment of students for participation in a Harvard demonstration since the Committee of Fifteen acted against 135 students after last April's occupation of University Hall.

Effective Immediately

James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and chairman of the Rights committee, said yesterday that the panel's decisions are effective immediately, and that the 16 students would not be permitted to take their final examinations in January.

In addition, Wilson said, the 16 will be forbidden "to be present in the Harvard University community, without specific authorization, until and unless" they are re-admitted to the University, and they will be warned that "failure to observe this requirement will jeopardize [their] chances for readmission, and may have legal consequences."

Legal Action

Wilson said the Rights committee might ask police to make arrests for trespassing, or might seek an injunction from the civil courts, if it found that students were "repeatedly and significantly" violating the terms of their exclusion from the University.

SDS co-chairman Cheyney C. Ryan '69-4 and SDS-member Judy Kauffman' 70 issued a statement on the committee's decisions last night. Their statement is reprinted at the end of this story. SDS will hold a meeting at 7:30 tonight in Lowell Lecture Hall to consider the punishments.

The Demonstration

Dean May charged 25 students with violating various provisions of the Faculty's Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities after more than 100 members of SDS and other students sat-in at his office November 19 and a group of them prevented him from leaving by linking their arms and surrounding his desk.

The demonstrators were demanding that Harvard promote workers now classified as "painters' helpers" to "painters," and that 20 per cent of the labor force on University construction sites be "blacks or third-world" workers.

The committee allowed seven of the students May charged to remain at the University, but placed them "under warning" or gave them "suspended suspensions."

The committee also "admonished" one student-a penalty which Wilson said

"carries no sanction" -and acquitted another.

Letter

Each of the 25 students whom May charged will receive a letter from the Rights committee today informing him of the outcome of his case. Each student has three days to ask for a reconsideration of the committee's decision. The committee will re-open a case if it feels a student has evidence contradicting its first findings, Wilson said.