Good afternoon. My name is Brad Sayler. I am a member of UVA's classified staff, and I work here in the Civil Engineering department. I like my job here at UVA, but I am not happy about the way that UVA is treating many of its employees.

Some people wish to frame The Campaign for a Living Wage as an economic issue that can be solved with numbers and equations, and supply and demand curves, but it goes far beyond that. This is a social issue that affects everyone in our nation. When UVA fails to pay a wage that allows its workers to live above the poverty line, after putting in 40 hours of work, parents are forced to work a second job to earn enough money to pay the landlord, buy groceries at Kroger's, and clothing at K-Mart. When they are working that second job, they can't be home with their children, helping them with schoolwork, teaching them right from wrong, and helping them to become good citizens.

When UVA doesn't pay its fair share, our schools suffer. Our community suffers. Local governments are forced to pick up the slack by providing additional social services.

UVA must pay its fair share.

It has been interesting to see UVA administration's attempt to control this movement. Little by little they have tried to chip away at us - arresting the Madison Hall 17 one day, and clearing the Madison Hall lawn three days later. They knew that they couldn't get away with doing it all at once.

I will tell you a story. If you put a frog in a pan of boiling water, he will jump out and save his life. If you put the same frog in a pan of cool water and slowly raise the temperature, he will stay in the pan until he dies. This is the same tactic UVA uses whenever they want to change things to their liking. Little by little, they chip away, until they meet their goal. Don't let this happen to our Campaign for a Living Wage.

We must all stand fast on this issue. We must all stand together.

I have had several e-mail exchanges over the past week with John Casteen. I have urged him to look for the common ground here, to agree to bring the full power of UVA's considerable influence in Richmond to bring a Living Wage to all UVA workers, and to extend an olive branch to that we can work together to get this done. He has responded with excuses, arrests, and evictions.

I listened to Professor Julian Bond speak in front of the Rotunda one week ago. In his speech, he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King. I would like to repeat those words once again.

Dr. King said "Nonviolence is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that heals. Our nonviolent direct-action program has as its objective not the creation of tensions, but the surfacing of tensions already present. We set out to precipitate a crisis situation that must open the door to negotiation. I am not afraid of the words "crisis" and "tension." I deeply oppose violence, but constructive crisis and tension are necessary for growth. Innate in all life, and all growth, is tension. Only in death is there an absence of tension. To cure injustices, you must expose them before the light of human conscience and the bar of public opinion, regardless of whatever tensions that exposure generates. Injustices (to the Negro) must be brought out into the open where they cannot be evaded."

A living Wage for UVA workers is the right thing. We must continue to tell John Casteen and UVA's Board of Visitors to do the right thing.

Thank you.

Brad Sayler