"ARREST STATEMENT

For those who watched as seventeen University students were dragged out of Madison Hall at seven pm tonight, the overwhelming emotion was nearly universal: shame.

For those who will hear about this evening's events, by word of mouth, telephone, or email tonight and tomorrow, the sentiment will be just as strong: shame.

Shame that we attend or teach at or support a university where this sort of thing could happen; shame that those individuals who make decisions and speak for our school would resort to half-truths and manipulation so that they could dispatch, with as little attention as possible, those students who took direct action for social justice.

In the words of one of the seventeen, "we thought we were entering into good faith negotiations, but we've been arrested in bad faith instead."

But we as students, faculty, and community members are not here because of tonight's events. The shame that the administration has brought on its and this university's public image tonight is passing- the shame of being the largest employer in a city with a poverty rate twice the national average has been the motivation for a living wage movement that did not start, end, or even reach its pinnacle at seven p.m. tonight.

University of Virginia has a $3.2 billion endowment that exceeds the national average tenfold, and we boast the fifth best compensated public university president in the country. But the people who clean our bathrooms and serve us dinner go without the basic necessities for a healthy life- for shame.

While we study and learn and achieve, the workers who are the engine of UVA face the injustices of poverty, choosing between nutritious meals for their families or proper child care. Ask any Charlottesville elementary school teacher about the link between poverty and the achievement gap in this city's schools; it is nothing less than shameful that the workers mopping Cabell as we go into our classes can expect a future for their own children that looks more like their bucket than our books.

There is another emotion that we feel tonight and that we felt as we watched the seventeen carried out of this Madison Hall, and that emotion is pride. We are proud of their bravery in the face of the administration's unfair negotiation tactics. But the real heroes are this university's employees, the parents who take in foster children on limited budgets, and the individuals who work two or three jobs to make ends meet for their families. It is long past due that we take pride in the way that this University treats them.

The choice that we make tonight is to turn the shameful actions that the administration has taken towards its own students into one more rallying call for the dignity and the pride of its workers." (UVa Living Wage Website, April 15, 2006)