About 350 students, representing three campus activist groups, protested for over three hours in a rally to ask Harvard to cut its ties with overseas sweatshops, to demand higher wages for University employees and to urge the Faculty to take a firmer stand against sexual assault.

"I think our Faculty has a right to carry on our deliberations in quiet and calm," he said. "An attempt at intimidation is a direct attack on the practice of reasoned deliberation."

Mansfield went on to condemn the protestors' tactics.

"It's childish for the students to pound bongo drums and chant slogans," he said.

He then recited his own chant before the full Faculty: "Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man, close those sweatshops as fast as you can."

In response to Mansfield, Lewis said he already expressed his disapproval of the students' tactics after last month's meeting. He also said a note had been added to this month's Faculty meeting agenda prohibiting the use of recording or electronic devices for communication in the Faculty room.

The new rule is in response to a specific tactic used by protesters in March. When Benjamin O. Shuldiner '99 read a statement on behalf of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) during the meeting, he used an electronic device to notify protestors that they should stop chanting. The rally resumed once Shuldiner was finished.