The faculty mediation attempts went through several stages. The first was direct negotiations with the students: what it meant in fact was that liberal professors attempted to get the strikers to ’soften’ their line, especially on amnesty, in exchange for vague promises which the ‘negotiators’ had no power to deliver. The logic of this situation led to such unseemly scenes as the ones in Fayerweather Hall, the ’softest’ of the Communes, where two ’socialist’ professors, Seymour Melman and Sidney Morgenbesser, harrangued an already divided and discouraged student assembly for over an hour, arguing that their revolt was dangerous and absurd because it was “unrealistic.” The two ex-student-radicals were attempting to influence the internal politics of the strikers, apparently oblivious of the facts that (1) as non-strikers they would not have to live by the result of the decision and (2) that they were now professors with a vested interest in the stability of Columbia. One wonders where the students found the patience to listen to them.