After 10 years of inactivity, a controversial committee charged with upholding the individual liberties of members of the Harvard community will convene next week to pursue possible disciplinary action against students involved in two recent anti-apartheid protests.

The Faculty Council, the Faculty's elected steering committee, voted Wednesday to call upon the 15-member student-faculty Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) to investigate the cases of students who took part in an April 24 sit-in at the headquarters of Harvard's Governing Boards and the May 2 blockade of a South African diplomat inside Lowell House.

Created in 1969

Created by the Faculty in 1969 to discipline students in the wake of a violent takeover of

University Hall, the CRR last assembled in 1978, but has not heard a case since 1975, when it admonished six students for a Massachusetts Hall takeover.

Since its establishment, students have perennially boycotted the committee, claiming that its powers are so vague that it can punish students for their political beliefs without appeal (see story page one).

Other students elected to the committee in its early years boycotted the CRR because they said their lives had been made impossible by pressure from fellow students.

House Committee chairmen from all 13 Houses will meet today with Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III to discuss whether they will accept the dean's invitation to nominate student representatives to the CRR.

Secretary to the Faculty John R. Marquand said that if students do not boycott the CRR this year, he hopes that the entire committee could be seated by the end of next week.

But he said that even if students do decide to continue the boycott, the committee is empowered to proceed and will still attempt to meet next week.

The seven Faculty members of the CRR were chosen at the beginning of the school year. The Faculty Council expects to choose a replacement for one of the seven. Gurney Professor of English Literature Jerome H. Buckley--on leave this semester--at next Wednesday's Faculty Council meeting.

Ideally, four undergraduates, two students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, six Faculty members and one non-voting Faculty chairman compose the CRR making it the only disciplinary body in which students may actively participate.

The CRR is vested with the authority to enforce the University's 1970 Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities (RRR), which outlines the University's policies on individual freedoms and obligations.

Crr decisions are binding and cannot be appealed, nor can they be overruled by either the Faculty or University administrators.

The Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, which condemns disruption of University business and violations of freedom and speech and movement about Harvard, is considered the relevant Faculty regulation for pursuing punitive action against students violating these and other freedoms. (see text, page 3)