PRESS RELEASE

FACULTY LETTER TO PRESIDENT CASTEEN ON THE LIVING WAGE

April 19, 2006

CONTACT: Herbert (Tico) Braun, hb3r@virginia.edu, 434-924-6406
Herbert (Chip) Tucker, ht2t@virginia.edu, 434-924-6677

Two hundred and twenty-three (223) members of the faculty of the University of Virginia from 42 academic units have to date signed the letter of April 11, 2006 to President John Casteen, urging him to engage the question of a living wage for all workers at the University. It should be noted that the Schools of Architecture, the Curry School of Education, and the Medical School, which are composed of multiple departments, are each treated as a single unit. Not all of the faculty have been reached, and more adherences to the letter are expected. The letter was written before the student sit-in in Madison Hall, and it does not refer to those actions.

Faculty wishing to sign the April 11 letter may contact Herbert (Tico) Braun
(History) at hb3r@virginia.edu, or Herbert (Chip) Tucker (English) at ht2t@virginia.edu.

April 11, 2006

John Casteen
Office of the President
Madison Hall
University of Virginia

Dear John,

We urge you to put the weight of upper administration behind the lately revived movement to institute a fair wage policy for full-time workers at the University. We make this appeal in the name of two causes that you hold as dear as we do: the cause of higher education in general, and the cause of this University in particular.

That a university’s reason for being is the education of its students is not a maxim you need to hear from us, for whom teaching and learning are life’s blood. We do need to convey, however, our distress at the disconnect between what we teach in our classrooms and the policies whereby the workers are compensated who maintain, not only those classrooms, but the entire physical plant. Because students are as apt to learn from what we do (or fail to do) as from what we say (or keep silent about), they must imbibe from current wage policy a dispiriting extracurricular lesson: namely, that the trenchant or subtle things they hear from us in class about ethics or politics or beauty or law or progress have little real meaning beyond the classroom door. At the bottom line, at the physical basis of higher education as a complex human institution, any student with eyes must conclude that a strikingly different set of rules apply from those that their professors have upheld for them to consider.

On Grounds a couple of weeks ago a set of undergraduates who, to our great admiration, have mobilized a renewal of the Living Wage campaign attended a meeting with you and other administrators. After this meeting they reported back to their supporters – in apparent shock, and not with malice – that at one point someone in the room had dismissed their argument on the ground that University policy in such a matter as staff compensation had nothing to do with “social justice.” This report from the students would be less dismaying if it struck us as less plausible; unfortunately, there is little to contradict it in the University's recent history of reluctant, belatedly reactive movement on wages for classified staff.

Whatever was told to the students last week, the fact remains that social justice is very much the business of a university. You affirmed as much last fall in the memorandum you sent urging all faculty to speak out in their classes against race hatred and intimidation as abominations incompatible with our mission. In the spirit of that memorandum -- with a lively sense, that is, of the pedagogically efficacious relation between preachment and practice -- we urge you now to decry the injustice embedded in a wage structure that consigns to economic hardship the most vulnerable members of the university community; and then to use your unique position to see that something is done to remove that injustice.

Such articulation and such action are incumbent, we hold, on any university sufficiently enlightened to grasp that personnel policies form an ingredient of the total education it delivers. Such articulation and such action are especially incumbent on this of all universities. While the University of Virginia neither can nor should disguise its implication in a long history of racial oppression and class inequity, it retains an obligation – which, as teachers, we know can by the same token be a precious opportunity -- to build an awareness of that history wherever possible into the University's patterns of instruction. Doing so indeed forms the intellectually respectable condition on which we may continue, as we certainly should do, to invoke the vision of our remarkable founder. The "peculiar institution" of human bondage that Thomas Jefferson hated, and the beloved institution of liberal education that he brought into being, converge again in 21st-century terms on the fair-wage challenge, which lies before us once more because it has not yet been addressed with the courage it demands.

If you can see this juncture in our institutional history as a time to demonstrate such courage, please do so. You will enjoy, and should freely call upon, the determined backing of the undersigned, and of many more colleagues to whom, from sheer pressure of time, we have not yet circulated this letter.

Signatories of the April 11 Faculty letter on the Living Wage
Matthew Affron, Art
Abdullah M. S. Osaimi, Medical School
Steve Arata, English
Jim Arnold, French
Cindy Aron, History
John Arras, Philosophy
Dorothe Bach, Teaching Resource Center
Peter Baker, English
Brian Balogh, History
Raul Baragiola, Materials Science and Engineering
Lawrie Balfour, Politics
Eve Bargmann, Medical School
Marva Barnett, French/TRC
Richard Barnett, History
Paul Barolsky, Art
Craig Barton, Architecture
Ira Bashkow, Anthropology
J. Taylor Beard, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
William Bennett, Art
Lenard Berlanstein, History
Vincent Blasi, Law
Daniel Bluestone, Architecture
Rae Blumberg, Sociology
Aniko Bodroghkozy, Media Studies
Julian Bond, History
Alison Booth, English
Herbert (Tico) Braun, History
Peter Brooks, Law
Sue Brown, Medical School
Talbot Brewer, Philosophy
Anna Brickhouse, English
Cammy Brothers, Architecture
Kate Burke, Drama
Enrico F. Cesaretti, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Bob Chapel, Drama
Griff Chaussée, AMELC
John Chirgwin, Medical School
Sylvia Chong, English/American Studies
Tanya Cobb, Architecture
Michael Coglan, Medical School
Rich Collins, Architecture, Emeritus
Alon Confino, History
Ellen Contini-Morava, Anthropology
Sarah Corse, Sociology
Don Wirwan, Chemical Engineering
David Kovacs, Classics
Fred Damon, Anthropology
Eve Danzinger, Anthropology
Dean Dass, Art
Angela Davis, Associate Dean of Students/Director, Residence Life
Joseph Davis, Sociology
Donal Day, Physics
Nancy Deutsch, Education
Lise Dobrin, Anthropology
Fred Diehl, Biology, Emeritus
A. Bruce Dotson, Architecture
Johanna Drucker, Media Studies
Hoyt Duggan, English
Daniel Ehnbom, Art
Kimberly Emery, Law School
Robert Emery, Psychology
James Esposito, Education
Charlotte Eubanks, AMELC
Sean Paul Evans, Drama
Christopher Fannin, Architecture
Ruth May Ferree, Education
Margo Figgins, Education
Gabriel Finder, History
Robert Fatton, Politics
Jessica Feldman, English
Rita Felski, English/Comparative Literature
Douglas Fordham, Medical School
Cassandra Fraser, Chemistry
Scot French, Woodson Institute
Ellen Fuller, AMELC
Susan Fraiman, English
Otto Friesen, Biology
Alfredo García, Systems and Information Engineering
Paul Gaston, History, Emeritus
Nataly Gattegno, Architecture
Jennifer Geddes, Religious Studies
Robert Geraci, History
Greg Gerling, Systems and Information Engineering
David Germano, Religious Studies
Brie Gertler, Philosophy
Risa Goluboff, Law
Lisa Goehler, Psychology
Tricia Gooley, Drama
David Golumbia, English, Media Studies and Linguistics
Anne Gregory, Education
Doug Grissom, Drama
Jeffrey Grossman, German
Gerald Haines, History
Grace Hale, History
Richard Handler, Anthropology
Geffrey Hantman, Anthropology
Claudrena Harold, History
Frederick Hayden, Medical School
Gregory Hays, Classics
LaVahn Ho, Drama
Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Religious Studies
Bruce Holsinger, Music/English
Jean Holley, Medical School
Peter Hook, AMELC
Bob Hueckstedt, AMELC
James Hunter, Sociology/Religious Studies
Deena Hurwitz, Law
Sandra Iliescu, Architecture
Marcia Invernizzi, Education
Vikram Jaswal, Psychology
Jason Johnson, Architecture
Robert Johnson, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
William Johnson, Materials Science and Engineering
Walter Jost, English
Volker Kaiser, German
Dean Kedes, Medical School
Dan Keenan, Statistics
William Keene, Environmental Studies
R. S. Khare, Anthropology
Clare Kinney, English
James Kinney, English
David Klein, Politics
Michael Kubovy, Psychology
Howard Kutchai, Medical School
Ann Lane, History
Adria LaViolette, Anthropology
Kate Lebow, History
Melvyn Leffler, History
Phyllis Leffler, History
Daniel Lefkowitz, Anthropology
Richard Lindgren, Physics
Lauren Lockhart, Medical School
Breyette Lorntz, Medical School
Eric Lott, English
Cecilia MacCallum, Medical School
Katya Makarova, Sociology
Wende Marshall, Anthropology
John Edwin Mason, History
Charles Marsh, Religious Studies
Jennifer Marks, Medical School
Gabrielle Marzani-Nissen, Medical School
Lorna Martens, German
David Mathewes, Religious Studies
Jerome McGann, English
Timothy MacDonald, Chemistry
Mary McKinley, French
Susan McKinnon, Anthropology
Christian McMillen, History
Peter Metcalf, Anthropology
Erik Midelfort, History
Farzaneh Milani, SWAG
Murray Milner, Jr., Sociology, Emeritus
George Mentore, Anthropology
Margaret Mohrmann, Education/Religious Studies
Nicholas De Monchaux, Architecture
David Morris, University Professor
Mohan Nadkarni, Medical School
Blaine Norum, Physics
Peter Norton, Science, Technology and Society
Brian Nosek, Psychology
Peter Ochs, Religious Studies
Vanessa Ochs, Religious Studies
Amy Ogden, French
Victoria Olwell, English
Peter Onuf, History
Brian Owensby, History
Ricardo Padrón, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Deborah Parker, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Charlotte Patterson, Psychology
Gustavo Pellón, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Randolph Pope, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
John Portman, Religious Studies
Judith Reagan, Drama/TRC
Bradly Reed, History
David Rifkind, Architectural History
Elizabeth Rooker-Morton, Medical School
Sophie Rosenfeld, History
Jeffrey Rossman, History
Marion Rust, English
George Rutherglen, Law
Hanan Sabea, Anthropology
Lynn Sanders, Politics
Mohammed Sawaie, AMELC
Karen Schmidt, Psychology
Leonard Schoppa, Politics
Ann Schutte, History
Richard Schragger, Law
Herman Schwartz, Politics
Jorge Secada, Philosophy
H. L. Seneviratne, Anthropology
David Shreve, Miller Center of Public Affairs
Nicolas Sihle, Anthropology
Howard Singerman, Art
Michael Smith, Politics
Martha Snell, Education
Janet Stack, Education
Bethany Teachman, Psychology
Elizabeth Thompson, History
Gregory Townsend, Medical School
Prudence Thorner, Office of the VP for Research and Graduate Studies
Carl Trindle, Chemistry
Betsy Tucker, Drama
Herbert (Chip) Tucker, English
John Voss, Medical School
Dell Upton, Architectural History and Anthropology
Denise Walsh, Politics/SWAG
Richard Warner, Drama
Heather Warren, Religious Studies
Dee Weikle, Computer Science
Robert Weikle, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Geoffrey Weiss, Medical School
Heather West, Medical School
Jennifer Wicke, English
Stephen Wilson, Electrical Engineering
Timothy Wilson, Psychology
Michiko Wilson, AMELC
Richard Wilson, Architecture
Diane Whaley, School of Education
Munsey Wheby, Medical School
Stephen White, Politics
Brian Wispelwey, Medical School
Dorothy Wong, Art