Following the Faculty's decision, Associate Professor of Government Louise M. Richardson and Associate Professor of Computer Science Margo I. Seltzer '83, two of the five who had recommended withdrawal, said they were not disappointed by the Faculty's decision.

"The Faculty have spoken," Richardson said. "We were not in any doubt that a rape occurred in this instance. Where we disagreed was on the appropriateness of the sanction of dismissal for this particular case."

In a letter sent to The Crimson and other organizations, the five Faculty members, which also included Professor of Psychology Daniel T. Gilbert, Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics William Paul and Professor of Greek and Latin Richard F. Thomas, stressed that their decisionwas based on specifics of the rape that were notavailable to the general public.

"If we felt that the student in question poseda threat to the Harvard community upon return infive years, we would not have made the motion,"the letter said. "From our reading of thematerials, we do not believe that this studentposes a threat."

Seltzer said that when the issue first camebefore the Faculty Council this fall--withoutdetails available from Ad Board proceedings--thevote was 14 to zero in favor of the Ad Board'srecommendation of dismissal, with threeabstentions.

After obtaining and reading the specifics ofthe case, the Faculty Council took another vote.The council's last vote was 12 to five in favor ofdismissal, with one abstention.

These Ad Board transcripts were not distributedto the full Faculty, according to one Facultymember who was in the meeting.

Instead, members of the Faculty Council who hadread the transcripts presented theirinterpretations of events, which were not uniform,the Faculty member said.

"The accounts of the events stressed somewhatdifferent things in the record," the Facultymember said.

Despite these varying accounts, the Faculty'sdebate centered not on the classification of theevents as rape, but on the proper punishment forDouglas.

"There wasn't a single Faculty member who spokethat thought this wasn't rape," the Faculty membersaid.

Instead, the Faculty member said the debatefocused on "what kind of rape this was and whatkind of institutional response was warranted."

President Neil L. Rudenstine and Dean of theFaculty Jeremy R. Knowles declined to commentafter the meeting.

Lewis said last night that the Faculty decisionreinforced College policy.

"Rape is one of the gravest forms of assault.The Faculty is now on the record affirming that inpractice, as is already stated in the handbook forstudents and the Ad Board user's guide," he wrotein an e-mail message.

The Faculty debated the two proposals forapproximately an hour and a half yesterday beforedeciding on dismissal.