"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.”" (Melanie Mayhew, The Daily Progress, April 16, 2006)

Contact Melanie Mayhew at (434) 978-7265 or mmayhew@dailyprogress.com.