The most telling moment in Paul Bass' latest follow-up on the Yale strike is his account of Levin's attempt to field his question: The road to a settlement proved that strikes do work. At least at Yale. Levin insists the two sides could have come to this agreement without a strike. "Had we been able to sit down" sooner in a "small group" holding serious negotiations, the deal would have come sooner, he says. But for a good year before the strike, union leaders argued that Levin, or another high-ranking administrator, needed to appear at negotiations for real progress. Levin denied it. Then, on the eve of the strike, he showed up at the table--and kept returning over 23 days, helping to crunch numbers and work toward compromise. Asked whether he would have shown up without a strike, Levin at first offered pause and no answer. Then he said, "At the right time and place, I would have been there." But before the strike, he denied repeated requests to do just that. Actually, at a Master's Tea in March, he told a group of undergraduates I was in that calling on him to come to the table was ridiculous. Once more, here's hoping next time Yale's leadership has an easier time recognizing the real interests of this University - and their resonance with the interests of this community.