Depsite Arrests, U-Va. Students Devoted to Bettering Workers
By Carol Morello and Susan Kinzie
The Washington Post
When Kevin Simowitz volunteered at the Salvation Army last year, many of the homeless men and women he met had jobs. Some had two.
But he was surprised to learn that they worked at the University of Virginia, where the 20-year-old sophomore from Cincinnati majors in American studies. One even served food in the Simowitz’s dining hall.
The realization that a worker holding down two jobs might not earn enough to live on prompted Simowitz to join 16 other students in a sit-in at Madison Hall, the campus building housing senior administrators’ offices. For four days and three nights, they occupied the lobby, demanding a ``living wage’’ of $10.72 for the lowest-paid university employees.
The sit-in ended Saturday when police, acting on direct orders from university President John T. Casteen III, arrested them on trespassing charges.
``The 17,’’ as they are now called, have been released from jail but are barred from setting foot on the grounds of Madison Hall. The pup tents on the front lawn where their supporters slept for three heady nights also were dismantled Tuesday when the administration threatened to impound them.
But the protests continue, drawing dozens and sometimes hundreds of sympathizers in the largest crowds this 20,400-student university has seen since the anti-apartheid demonstrations of the 1980s. Poverty in Charlottesville is decried at daily teach-ins. In a symbolic sit-in, students will take turns sitting in 17 circles chalked on the sidewalk around Madison Hall. A new tent city is being planned.
``It’s a movement that will not end until we have a living wage at this university,’’ Simowitz said. ``A lot of people are fired up about this right now.’’
The ``academical village’’ founded and designed by Thomas Jefferson is just one of the latest college campuses to be galvanized by the movement for a living wage this spring. A tent city has gone up at the University of Vermont, and students at the University of Miami have gone on a fast.
And at U-Va.’s sister school, the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, students are touting the success of last year’s demonstrations, which they credit for an increase in the base pay for workers.
Students from Georgetown University, where a nine-day hunger strike last year led to higher wages, are working with the Living Wage Action Coalition, which includes five campuses and helps coordinate campaigns at more than 50 others. The coalition offers training workshops and even flies student activists to other campuses. Georgetown students have visited U-Va. and other schools urging similar protests, activists said.
Emotions are particularly high at the University of Miami, where a fasting senior was taken to a hospital Tuesday. Bethany Quinn of McLean, Va., 20, another student protester existing on juice and miso soup, said she is committed to helping workers: ``These are members of our community, the people who take care of our university. That deserves a lot of respect.’’
Previous protests at other schools, including Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford and Harvard universities, have also brought results.
Some critics say the students are being manipulated by groups with other agendas.
``The unions are heavily behind it,’’ said John Doyle of the Employment Policies Institute, a think tank that focuses on entry-level employment issues. ``It’s fertile ground for them, with a lot of young people who are ... thinking more often with their hearts than with their minds,’’ he said, adding that pay raises can cost jobs.
Stephen Lerner, who directs the Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign, said students are often the ones calling the union, not the other way around.
``You have a moral responsibility, a community responsibility, to make sure the people that pick up after you are paid decently,’’ said Lerner, whose organization started in the 1980s when building owners, universities and others began outsourcing jobs.
When the union noticed contractors paying low wages without benefits, he said, it launched a national campaign to pressure institutions to take responsibility for workers’ conditions.
The campaign for a living wage at U-Va. started in 1998. It scored a memorable victory when the hourly wage for non-faculty employees was raised from $6.50 to about $8 in 2000. The cost of living has soared since then, and today’s lowest hourly wage of $9.37--raised from $8.88 just last month--has not kept pace, advocates say. University officials say generous benefits add 35 percent to workers’ compensation.
But students argue that many workers are paid far less. That’s because some are not direct employees of the university. Instead, contractors employ them as food servers, janitors and groundskeepers.
Casteen has said that under an advisory opinion from Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell, R, he does not have the legal authority to raise wages for employees of contractors.
Nor can the administration unilaterally give raises to the more than 10,000 non-faculty employees, said Carol Wood, a university spokeswoman. The school has gradually been increasing pay scales, but it would need the General Assembly’s approval to grant a raise as high as the $10.72 living wage that activists are demanding, she said.
No one disputes that university employees are among the working poor.
Joy Johnson, a community activist who lives in Charlottesville’s largest public-housing development, estimated that 95 percent of those in the 136 units work for the University of Virginia. She said they consider it too risky to join the protests.
``They want to participate,’’ said Johnson, who quit a job as a medical records clerk at the university because she did not make enough to live on. ``But they’re afraid of losing their little bit of a job.’’
In Charlottesville, where an estimated one in four working adults lives in poverty, the campaign for a living wage has energized student protesters in a way other issues have not.
``Many of these students feel a great desire to do something tangible,’’ said Grace Hale, a history professor who teaches a class on poverty in Charlottesville. ``Whatever they feel about the war in Iraq, they don’t feel like they can do anything about it. They really feel they can do something on this issue.’’
The 17 arrested students are among the university’s brightest, according to school officials. One is a prestigious Jefferson Scholar with a full scholarship.
They came to their sit-in dressed as if for a job interview. The seven male students wore ties and jackets; the women were in pressed slacks and tailored blouses.
They were armed with food, sleeping bags, cellphones and laptop computers to keep up with class assignments. But on the second day, the school severed wireless Internet access.
Tensions flared briefly. Police arrested anthropology professor Wende Marshall for trespassing when she entered Madison Hall to visit the students. On Friday night, hundreds of supporters encircled the building and joined hands amid rumors of imminent arrests.
After midnight, Casteen showed up to negotiate an end to the sit-in. He offered to join the students in lobbying the General Assembly for living-wage legislation, according to a transcript of a tape the university provided to the student paper, the Cavalier Daily.
The son of a shipyard worker from Portsmouth, Va., Casteen is sympathetic to the cause of a living wage, Wood said. But after negotiations ended in a stalemate, Casteen reluctantly ordered the students arrested, she said.
The cases are now in the hands of the commonwealth’s attorney. The university cannot drop the charges, Wood said. Trespassing carries up to a $2,500 fine and a year in jail, although no one expects the punishment to be that harsh.
The arrests have left a bitter feeling on this generally apolitical campus.
``These are students who have learned it’s not just about grades and graduate school, it’s about the real world,’’ said Susan Fraiman, an English literature professor who supports the students. ``The idea of punishing them rather than admiring them is wrongheaded.’’
The sentiment appears to be spreading. A jogger running past Madison Hall Tuesday morning shouted out, ``What do we want?’’ A man sitting on a bench shouted back, ``A living wage.’’
