[Virginia] Seventeen arrested at U.Va. protest

from The Richmond Times Dispatch

Students removed from president's office after sit-in over minimum pay

BY CARLOS SANTOS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Seventeen University of Virginia students occupying Madison Hall were arrested last night and charged with trespassing.

The students had been camped out in the lobby of U.Va. President John T. Casteen's office since Wednesday morning demanding that the school raise the minimum wage for its employees to what they call a "living wage."

"They were pretty much dragged out," said Amanda LeTard, a third-year-student who saw the arrests.

She said a crowd of about 100 students watched when campus police entered the administration building about 7 p.m.

"We were upset," LeTard said. "I don't think there was anger. It was more frustration and sadness."

Casteen had met with the students early yesterday morning in an effort to end the impasse.

"We believe it was important to bring this sit-in to conclusion so that others might get on with their lives and the staff of Madison Hall might be able to get back to work on Monday morning," Casteen said in a statement last night. "It was time for the disruption to come to an end."

Casteen said U.Va. employees had worked long hours during the past few days to ensure the safety of the students in the building.

"This was not our preference," said Carol Wood, a spokeswoman for the university.

"But in the end, they gave us no op- tion."

Mike Gibson, the school's interim police chief, said most of the students were carried out of the building.

"Sometimes the magistrate will view that as resisting arrest," he said, though he did not know if those charges were brought.

Ben Van Dyne, a third-year student who helped organize the protest, was at the Albemarle County Magistrate's Office last night as the students were being processed.

"It was very disappointing," he said. "We were in the middle of good-faith negotiations and they decided to respond with arrests. We won't be silenced by coercion."

The students are demanding that entry-level workers be paid $10.72 an hour. Currently, U.Va.'s minimum wage is $9.37 an hour.

"We believe workers here should be living with dignity," Katrina Salmons, a fourth-year student from Chantilly who was one of the students in the sit-in, said on Friday. "We want everyone to have a decent life here. We don't want to live off someone's poverty."

In addition to the sit-in, several hundred students have been protesting sporadically in front of the Rotunda and Madison Hall since Wednesday.

The campaign to raise the minimum wage at the school has been going on since 1998. The sit-in was part of a strategy to ratchet up the pressure.

Lauren Cruickshank, a fourth-year student from Arlington County who was in Madison Hall, said Friday that "the issue is not going away. It's worthy of escalation."

Abbie Bellows, a student from Vienna and a member of a group called The Living Wage Campaign at the University of Virginia, said "eight years of unfulfilled dialogue" with university officials was enough. "Now that we're dramatizing the issue, it's essential the university make concrete changes in the wages of the workers."

Students even pitched a few tents in the grass in front of Madison Hall to demonstrate their support for the sit-in group. Friday afternoon, students formed a chain around the building, chanting and singing.

But not all U.Va. students stand in solidarity. A small group counter-demonstrated against the living wage movement on Thursday. Brad Moore, a third-year student from Richmond, was among that group.

"So far it's been a pretty one-sided movement. The real nitty-gritty is that economics have been neglected," Moore said. "The ramifications of raising wages to an artificially higher level will make other employers have to do the same. Prices go up. I don't think it's a good move. Somebody has to pay for this -- you can't conjure the money up."

U.Va. increased its hourly wage to $9.37 an hour last month from $8.88 an hour after doing market surveys, officials said.

"It's a fair and equitable salary for entry-level workers," said Wood, who noted that benefits will increase next year to add the equivalent of $3.45 to the current minimum wage. The raise in wages was funded by private funds and tuition dollars.

The city of Charlottesville's minimum wage is $9.36 an hour, though that will go up to $9.73 an hour in July. However, city spokesman Ric Barrick said no full-time city employee makes less than $10 an hour.

The minimum hourly wage for classified state government employees is $6.83. The minimum wage in Virginia is $5.15 per hour.

The campaign for "living wages" by students has waxed and waned in Virginia and across the country over the years.

In March, the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg raised salaries for its lowest-paid workers after students protested the pay levels. The school increased it base rate for all full-time and part-time employees to $9.18 an hour from $8.72 an hour.

The pay level for entry-level grounds workers increased to $10.67 an hour.

At the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, where "living-wage" protests have taken place in the past, the minimum hourly wage is now $9 an hour, said William T. Walker, the school's associate vice president for public affairs.

Casteen has said he believes wages at the university are "fair, that they do not constitute what you have represented to the public as poverty wages, and that they represent the highest comparable wage schedules in the region, including those paid by the city of Charlottesville."

Casteen said in an e-mail to The Times-Dispatch on Friday that he admires the students' "citizen activism" but that one of the students' demands -- to raise wages for employees of contractors who work at U.Va. -- is beyond his authority as determined by the state attorney general's office.

"Sitting in my office is not going to change state law," Casteen said. "So I could admire even more ardently if our protesters were to get straight where Richmond is and learn how laws get made."