I’m not a big fan of University of Virginia President John Casteen (See “UVa under Siege — from Within“), but I’ll give him credit for his handling of the living-wage sit-in over the weekend. Seventeen UVa students who’d been occuping Madison Hall were arrested and charged with trespassing. As one observer quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch described the episode, “They were pretty much dragged out.”
Casteen had met with the students and discussed their demands for the University to raise the minimum wage of university employees from $9.37 an hour (significantly higher than the national minimum wage) to $10.72 an hour. The students are entitled to demonstrate over the living wage, but they’re aren’t entitled to disrupt the lives of others. From the T-D account:
“We believe it was important to bring this sit-in to conclusion so that others might get on with their lives and the staff of Madison Hall might be able to get back to work on Monday morning,” Casteen said in a statement [Saturday] night. “It was time for the disruption to come to an end.”
