"On the evening of Monday, April 10, Katrina Salmons decided she would join sixteen of her fellow students at a sit-in at Madison Hall as part of the Living Wage Campaign. Two days later, on Wednesday morning, these students entered the building, which houses the office of President John T. Casteen III and sat down in the lobby. Their demands were those of the campaign itself: a “living wage”—a pay rate of $10.72, as the campaign estimates—for the university’s lowest paid workers. They remained in Madison Hall for four days until their arrest on Saturday.

By Wednesday afternoon, a large numbers of supporters of the Living Wage Campaign had gathered on the lawn of Madison Hall, displaying signs, waving banners and cheering. University police had arrived on the scene, barring entrance to the building. Speculation about potential arrests abounded.

Shortly before 5 p.m. the speculation gave way to fact. At that time, police arrested Anthropology Professor Wende Marshall on charges of trespassing, upon attempting to gain access to the building.

According to Marshall, she moved to enter the building after Living Wage Campaign organizer Abby Bellows informed her that the students inside were concerned about their fate as the building’s business hours drew to a close.

The students inside were not arrested and supporters outside Madison Hall stayed the night, maintaining what the Living Wage Campaign’s website called a “twenty-four hour vigil.” Supporters subsequently erected tents in front of the building to form what came to be known as the “tent city,” which housed supporters outside Madison Hall for the duration of the sit-in. Every evening when the building closed, the organizers outside held a rally in hopes of preventing arrests inside by a show of numbers.

Safety in Numbers

During the four days that the students spent in Madison Hall, arrest loomed constantly on the horizon. Some hoped to avoid arrest; others considered it imminent.

Salmons, for her part, joined the sit-in partly to bolster the number of students involved, hoping to reduce the odds of getting arrested.

“[My decision to sit-in] came to that I could help on the inside . . . the number inside is really important,” she said.

Seth Croft, another member of the sit-in, shared Salmons’ sentiment, citing research on sit-ins.

“The more people you have on the inside, the less likely you are to get arrested . . . the more power you have to negotiate,” he said.

However, Croft also acknowledged that his “willingness to get arrested” contributed to his desire to join the other sixteen.

According to university spokesperson Carol Wood, the administration had hoped to avoid arrests altogether.

“We take no pleasure in arresting our own students . . . it’s not where we thought we would end up,” she said.

Arresting Development

But that is how it ended up. According to the university’s website on competitive compensation, on Saturday evening, “U.Va. administrators notif[ied] student protesters that they must leave Madison Hall or face arrest for criminal trespass.” The students stayed and were arrested around 7 p.m.

According to Wood, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the University Leonard Sandridge offered the students several opportunities to sign a summons and exit the premises.

Authorizing the arrests “was a decision made reluctantly . . . the police were encouraged to encourage the students to” leave the building, rather than be arrested, Wood said, speaking on behalf of the administration.

Salmons and Croft, however, both claim that the situation was not made clear by Sandridge and the police officers present.

“They said, ‘You can sign the summons and leave now’ . . . but they never told us what the summons was or why they were asking us to sign it at Madison Hall. We were confused,” Salmons said.

According to Croft, “Kevin [Simowitz, a member of the sit-in] asked repeatedly, ‘What’s a summons? How do you sign a summons?’ No one would answer.”

The participants of the sit-in have further expressed concerns over the handling of the arrests.

For Croft, the treatment of certain students who were dragged out by the police—having gone limp, as recommended by prior civil disobedience training—led to “a decision . . . by some to stand up and walk out.”

“I can’t really piece together what happened exactly . . . it was that traumatic,” Salmons said.

According to Wood, while the administration had hoped to avoid arrests, they went as well as could be expected.

The students were held over the weekend and released on a $500 personal recognizance bond on Monday.

Seventeen Hunger Force

Although the sit-in ended in arrests, by Saturday afternoon, some of the sit-in participants had already begun to consider leaving of their own volition, both Salmons and Croft said.

“After Casteen came in the second time [at around 1 a.m. Saturday morning], people were crying. People were saying, ‘I want to go home’ . . . it was really hard,” Salmons said.

Despite the mentality that “we came in for wage parity and we’re not going to leave until we get it or they drag us out . . . we were in the middle of holding a vote about staying or going when Sandridge walked in” with police to serve the students their summonses, Teresa Daniels, a sit-in participant, said.

According to Croft, discussions about leaving stemmed in part from a sense of frustration with the administration, especially with Casteen. Croft felt particularly distraught with what he viewed as unfair treatment by the administration in terms of synthesizing counters to Casteen’s proposals.

The deadlines given “were not fair compared to the resources and deadlines that Casteen gave himself,” Croft said.

Daniels considered the power disparity to be a calculated move.

“We were manipulated by the administration to act as the main negotiating body for the living wage,” which we should not have been, she said, suggesting that others on the outside should have been involved as well.

According to Wood, the administration viewed the talks in a different light.

“The thought was . . . these weren’t negotiations. No one was being held against their will. These students came in on their own. These were informational conversations,” she said.

What Salmons described as tactics of “psychological abuse” by the administration also made some students consider leaving the building.

According to students both inside and outside Madison Hall, although the sit-in participants brought with them four days worth of food, no new provisions were allowed to be brought inside beginning on Thursday.

The initial food supply had virtually run out by Friday morning, campaign supporters and sit-in participants said.

“We felt like we were being starved. We were really hungry . . . we thought this was some barbaric technique,” Croft said.

Additional food was brought inside after Casteen received a request for it from students when he met with them early Saturday morning, though not all of it was immediately distributed, Wood said.

“It was not our intention to have them have an extended stay on the floor of Madison Hall . . . The assumption was that the students would be leaving soon,” she further stated, clarifying the reasons for the moratorium on the conduction of additional food into Madison Hall.

Despite the arrests, the Living Wage Campaign has continued its push for a minimum pay rate of $10.72 for workers both employed by the university and contracted by private corporations, such as Aramark.

On Monday of this week—the day that Salmons and her sixteen fellow students were released from Albermarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail—the campaign hosted a rally that boasted upwards of 280 attendees, featuring Barbara Ehrenreich—the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America—and Mark Lane—an author and lifelong labor advocate.

That evening, the “tent city” was taken down at Sandridge’s request. According to Wood, his request was made for “sanitation reasons.”

Wood also noted that there are designated spots on grounds where groups may legally hold protests. Madison Hall is not one of these locations, she added.

According to emails and conversations between organizers, further direct action is planned by the Living Wage Campaign in the coming weeks." (Ian MacDougal, The Declaration, April 20, 2006)