Posted on 04/16/2006 4:10:43 AM PDT by csvset
Seventeen University of Virginia students staging a sit-in at the school’s administrative headquarters were arrested Saturday evening on day four of a standoff between students and administrators squabbling over giving all UVa employees a “living wage” of $10.72 an hour.
Many of the handcuffed students were carried out of Madison Hall into waiting paddy wagons at 7 p.m. At least one of the students was screaming, and many were crying, according to witnesses. The student protesters had been squatting in the building to force the university into increasing its lowest pay rate, which currently stands at $9.37 per hour.
President John T. Casteen III ordered the arrests, shortly after he and other top administrators met with the students and concluded fruitless negotiations. The students, all undergraduates, were arrested on charges of trespassing after declining to leave the building peacefully when asked.
“Casteen was clear throughout the four days that while he respected the work that the group has done and their dedication to it, he did not believe a sit-in in Madison Hall was the best way to produce those results,” according to a university statement.
Minutes after the students were arrested, students rallied outside Madison Hall, and publicly assured university officials that they would continue their quest and would remain camped out on the building’s lawn.
“We need your voices,” said Abby Bellows, a fourth-year student and UVa Living Wage Campaign organizer. “Grow more invested in the movement.”
The students and Casteen had been exchanging proposals throughout the day. Casteen proposed to join with the students to further evaluate the living wage and offered to connect the students with legislators in the General Assembly. The students asked for more time and refused to back down from winning the fight for a living wage.
The students were taken to a back entrance of the magistrate’s office and still remained inside at 9 p.m. The building’s main door was locked shortly after a crowd began gathering outside. Telephone requests by journalists to enter the building were denied.
The arrests, although “not entirely unexpected,” were disappointing, said Benjamin Van Dyne, a third-year student and one of the campaign organizers.
“We were in the middle of what we believed were good-faith negotiations and they responded with arrests,” he said.
He found it appalling that the university would “suffer the huge embarrassment of arresting its students before it honestly engaged in the issue of paying people a decent wage.”
The students’ presence inside Madison Hall was disruptive and inconvenienced many, UVa spokeswoman Carol Wood said. Also, she added, the negotiation process was at a standstill.
The university cut off the students’ wireless access at the close of the business day on Wednesday and initially prohibited any deliveries to the students. A pile of food outside the guarded building grew, and eventually Casteen OK’d the distribution of food to the students. Top administrators said that some of the food was not given to the students because it may have spoiled after sitting outside for several hours. Students outside said their peers within had received only a bag of bagels. Several student sources claimed to have found in a nearby dumpster nonperishable food - including several boxes of granola bars and tubs of peanut butter - that had been left for the students.
After the students were arrested, a parent waited outside the magistrate’s office for his son, one of the 17 who had been participating in the sit-in.
“What [the students] did was for a noble purpose and they had to decide what to do,” said John Mausert-Mooney of Fairfax, whose son, Andrew, is a second-year student.
Earlier, the father carried a sign in support of the campaign.
“I’m very proud of what Andrew and his fellow students are doing, both inside and out [of Madison Hall],” he said. “The role of the university is to educate minds, but also to educate the whole person … to set an example of justice.”
Casteen planned to continue discussing the living wage issue with the students, Wood said.
“He’s very interested in meeting with them,” she said, “but meeting on the floor of Madison Hall is not productive.”
The students will keep pushing for a living wage, Van Dyne said.
“We have come out of this with a movement that’s stronger than ever,” he said. “It’s a movement that’s energized and growing and that will not be silenced or satisfied by half-measures or by coercion.”
Contact Melanie Mayhew at (434) 978-7265 or mmayhew@dailyprogress.com.
At least one of the students was screaming, and many were crying, according to witnesses.
The horror, the horror.
What's the tuition at UVA? Perhaps the students could convince their parents to make up the wage difference.
Hello, Daddy? Please cut a check to the UVA's Worker's Fund.
Note that Daddy is hyphenated
......“We were in the middle of what we believed were good-faith negotiations and they responded with arrests,” ......
I guess you were wrong. Don't bring a disruptive sit in to the negotiating table and expect no counter offer.
You offered sit in, the adninistration offered arrest.
Ah Spring. Young skulls full of mush look for more ways to get out of school.
Trespassing is not part of good-faith negotiations.
I am with you. I dont see a problem. The school should just announce a $1000 dollar increase in tuition for everyone,payable immediately to cover the costs of what the students want.
Maybe then the students would realise where the money comes from to meet their demands. There isnt a printing press in the basement that prints money.In the end it comes from their pockets.
Um...if you can't make it in Charlottesville, Virginia on $9.37 an hour...sheesh. We aren't talking San Francisco or midtown Manhattan here.
}:-)4
If they had been illegal aliens there would not have been any arrests.
Gee, they have to have their daily, or 3, Starbucks!
Here's another idea. If you don't like the amount that the job pays, go find another job.
This is a liberal right of passage that has been going on since I was a student there.
These college kids didn't even think far enough ahead to plan on bringing in some snacks or other substinence? What exactly are they learning in school?
Obviously, no potential Halliburton employees here. Sounds like they will all end up on government payrolls, or some traditional media organization.
When Businesses are guranteed a "living profit" then workers will be gurantee a "living wage"
Shades of France!!!
UVA is a state school, not very expensive for in state residents, not even too bad for out of state. In any case, wage increases would have to be supported directly by the Virginia taxpayers or by the parents of students. I have the feeling that this group of students favors the tax increase solution.
OTOH, since the jobs they are talking about are state jobs, I imagine that not only do these jobs carry good benefits, but that they are sought after and prized.
Just a guess, and just my 2 cents.
They must be flunking...
(Actually, the COL in the Charlottesville area is not low. It's comparable to the DC area. Many public servants and teachers cannot afford to live in the city or in surrounding Albemarle County.)
There was an article/commentary in Friday's Cav Daily, iirc, about this. It mentioned wireless internet as being a necessity and how the students involved in the sit-in were worried about missing assignments. Provided me with quite a chuckle.
I'll go look it up, but is Madison Hall the building at the corner of Main/University and Rugby, across Rugby from Casteen's house? I can't remember right now.
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