Arrests Don't End Wage Protests

"Charlottesville has a poverty rate of over 25 percent and one of the highest costs of living," said Bellows, who is majoring in policy and social thought and Jewish studies. "What the [current] wage says is that the people who sweep our floors don't have the right to live in the community."

But officials dispute the $10.72 figure and the means by which it was tallied. In another letter to students posted online Friday, Casteen suggested that the groups work together to reach a compromise wage figure.

In addition, university spokeswoman Carol Wood said yesterday that the living wage campaign has not taken account of the university's "extremely generous" benefits package, which she said raises overall compensation by more than one-third. Factoring in benefits raises entry-level compensation by $6,843 a year, she said.

The university's lowest hourly wage of $9.37 is higher than the lowest wage paid by the city, by a penny, and the state's minimum hourly wage for government employees of $6.83, Casteen wrote.

News reports in Charlottesville said that the city's hourly wage will increase to $9.73 in July but that no full-time city employee makes less than $10 an hour.

As the region's largest employer, Bellows said, the university has the "moral imperative . . . to make sure the workers who are doing so much for this institution can put food on the table." The employees, she said, keep the campus clean and tidy and the roughly 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students fed.

The arrests of the 17 students who would not leave Madison Hall, where Casteen's office is, have done nothing to deter those fighting for better wages, said third-year student Benjamin Van Dyne of Arlington, a philosophy major.

"The arrests were the administration's response to our very substantive proposal. It was a bad-faith move during our good-faith efforts," he said. "This movement will not be silenced or satisfied with half-measures."

Wood said last night that Casteen still wishes to engage the students in discussion.