"Seventeen University of Virginia students continued their sit-in at Madison Hall on Thursday, still optimistic their public display would prompt the university to raise its minimum hiring rate to a “living wage” of $10.72 an hour.

The students marched into the university’s administrative headquarters at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday and remained overnight. The students spent much of Wednesday e-mailing professors and friends, asking them to join a growing crowd outside. The sit-in drew police, who arrested a UVa professor in Madison Hall on a charge of trespassing after police told her to leave.

Although none of the students was arrested, all lost their wireless access after the building closed at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. That access was not restored when the building opened Thursday, UVa spokeswoman Carol Wood confirmed.

Kevin Simowitz, a second-year student participating in the sit-in, said the lack of wireless access was “restricting [our] ability to be full university students,” and labeled the university’s move “absolutely obscene.”

“The fact that they’ll do terrible things doesn’t surprise me,” Simowitz said, using the university’s $9.37 an hour minimum hiring rate as an example of a “terrible” thing.

Students are permitted to use the bathrooms and drinking fountains, but cannot take deliveries from outside. If the students leave, they will not be allowed to return.

A religious studies professor on Thursday tried to bring Jewish students inside Madison Hall Passover food but was turned away by police, according to a student organizer.

“The students are free to go at any time and resume their daily activities, including classes,” Wood said. “Their presence in Madison Hall yesterday, overnight and today has been disruptive to those who work in the building and has diverted the time of many who have other business to attend to. We’re not inclined to provide amenities to the students that would serve to encourage them to remain.”

Organizers behind the UVa Living Wage Campaign said they would rally outside Madison Hall at 1 p.m. every day their comrades remain inside. On Thursday they gathered outside the building and chanted, “Keep the pressure on Casteen, we support the 17.”

Late Wednesday evening, President John T. Casteen III visited the students in Madison Hall and shared a statement in which he cited a letter from the state attorney general’s office. Living wage organizers have said the university can affect contract workers’ wages; the letter says the university has no authority to determine these wages. The letter does not address direct employees, but Casteen emphasized that the university can adjust direct employees’ salaries as the result of market surveys.

Last month, Casteen announced that all academic and medical center employees would earn at least $9.37 an hour, 49 cents more than the previous minimum pay rate. He attributed that increase to market surveys.

The minimum hiring rate in the city of Charlottesville is $9.36 an hour. No full-time city employee earns below $10 an hour, city spokesman Ric Barrick said.

Living wage supporters had pitched tents and some were swinging in a hammock on Thursday. Others were playing four square on the chalked sidewalk leading to Madison Hall. Inside, students munched on the remainders of the food they brought on Wednesday: peanut butter, chocolate chips, salad dressing, chickpeas, kidney beans and ravioli.

They’ll continue to sit in Madison Hall until they get what they want, sit-in participant and third-year student Sean Butterfield said.

“If the semester runs out and we’re still here,” he said, “at least we’ve raised awareness.”" (Melanie Mayhew, The Daily Progress, April 14, 2006)