The Chronicle: 17 Students Are Arrested at U. of Virginia After Sit-In Outside President’s Office
Seventeen students taking part in a sit-in at the University of Virginia were arrested on Saturday night after spending four days in the lobby to the president’s office in a “living wage” campaign on behalf of university workers.
A similar protest on behalf of workers at the University of Vermont ended Friday night when two dozen demonstrators were evicted from a tent city on the university green.
The Virginia students want the university to raise the wages of its lowest-paid workers from $9.37 to $10.72 per hour.
In a statement, John T. Casteen III, the university’s president, said he had met with the students several times and felt that the protest had gone on long enough: “The university takes no pleasure in having to arrest its own students, but it was time for the disruption to come to an end.”
The president said the protest was interfering with the work of university administrators and was costing them time over the holiday weekend.
The students were charged with trespassing. One of the students was also charged with resisting arrest, and another was charged with vandalism.
Abby Bellows, a senior at the university and an organizer of the Living Wage Campaign, told the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, that she was “very disappointed that this is how the university has chosen to respond to the critical thinking and constructive compromises of students standing with workers.”
In Vermont, members of the Student Labor Action Project had put up tents on Tuesday after a failed attempt to occupy the president’s office. The protest ended peacefully after university and Burlington, Vt., police officers surrounded their tents and told them they had to leave.
The university’s lowest-paid workers earn $9 an hour and have health benefits, a university official told a local newspaper. The student group is seeking a $12-an-hour wage for the workers.
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