The Harvard Corporation decided yesterday to vote against the two Corporate Responsibility resolutions at the General Motors annual meeting Friday in Detroit.

Turning down a request to vote Harvard's 287,000 shares of GM stock with the Washington-based Campaign to Make General Motors Responsible, the Corporation issued a carefully-worded four-page document outlining its objections to the two resolutions.

The resolutions call for:

creating an independent shareholders Committee to investigate the impact of GM's policies on auto safety, pollution, mass transit, and minority hiring and make recommendations for improvements to the stockholders next year;

expanding the GM Board of Directors to include three representatives of the public. Campaign GM has nominated Betty Furness, special consumer consultant to President Johnson; Rene Dubos, Pulitzer Prize winning environmentalist; and Rev. Channing Phillips, Washington evil rights leader.

The Corporation decision follows a barrage of petitions, letters, polls, and faculty statements which have been sent to it after a request for comments from the University April 6.

No Head-Count

About three-fourths of these urged the Corporation to support Campaign GM's two resolutions, the Corporation release stated. "However, all but a handful of the communications consist of a recommendation unsupported by consideration of what seem to us to be difficult issues raised by the resolutions," the statement added.

Consequently, the release stated, "the issues can best be resolved not by a head-count of supporters and opponents, but by thoughtful consideration of the means proposed to effect changes which most of us desire."

Responding immediately to the decision, the Harvard Environmental Law Society and Harvard Ecology Coalition deplored the action in a joint statement.

"The Corporation's statement at best represents a desire not to get involved, at worst reflects Treasurer [George F.] Bennett's reactionary attitude that the reform proposals will allow 'socialism' to upset the 'traditional American way of making business decisions,' "they said.

While acknowledging a mutual concern among all institutions in the country for the public health, safety, and welfare, the Corporation's document noted that "the question is whether the actions proposed by the Project on Corporate Responsibility are the rightmethod to achieve this agreed-upon objective."

"In our view, the Board of Directors and not the stockholders of a corporation constitute the proper body for the determination of difficult questions of allocation of resources," the statement read.

"Assuming that able and experienced people of judgment can be found who would be willing to devote the time necessary for effective service on the proposed [shareholder] committee," it continued, "we think that the amount of management time which would have to be expended in educating the Committee concerning the problems and affairs of General Motors Corporation would be so large as materially to interfere with the management's performance of its principal duties."

The Corporation also questioned the method proposed for selecting the investigating committee and the means for resolving "such differences as may appear between the Committee and management."

But Corporation members did recognize the legitimacy of Campaign GM criticisms of management. "It is, of course, true that particular decisions by General Motors in the areas of minority rights, pollution, safety and mass transit may be questioned," they said.