PSLM members say they view the faculty meeting as a victory-only one faculty member spoke out against a living wage at the meeting.

"The tone of the faculty was favorable to the campaign," said Professor Everett Mendelsohn. "A number of people commended the students for teaching them about issues of economic justice."

According to Mendelsohn, faculty members who support the living wage were quite pleased with the meeting's tone.

"It's absolutely amazing for an emergency faculty meeting to be called and to have it go so completely against the administration's stance," McKean said.

Rudenstine began the meeting by talking broadly about the living wage issue and the occupation of Mass. Hall, Mendelsohn said.

Responding to a suggestion that the students be evicted, Rudenstine told the assembled faculty that, if conditions remain as they are, the students would not be evicted and police would not remove the protesters from the building. The promise elicited applause from the faculty members.

In the most important move of Friday's meeting, Rudenstine announced that he would reopen the living wage issue by assembling a new committee that could include student representatives.

The original Ad-Hoc Faculty Committee on Employment Policies took a full 13 months to release its 100-plus page report last spring.

But it could be easier the second time around.

Since the Ad-Hoc committee laid much of the groundwork, University Vice President Paul S. Grogan, who attended Friday's meeting, said that a new committee could address a more well-defined set of questions.

The original committee was given the rather broad charge of exploring issues of low-paid Harvard workers.

They had to start from scratch-figuring out the number of workers who earned below the living wage.

"It might be possible to give a new committee a sharper focus," Grogan said.

"This represents a very significant move that the President is willing to look again at this whole series of issues so soon," he continued. "This is an extraordinary thing to do."