I MUST forewarn the reader, this is yet another column about the Living Wage Campaign. But before you skip to sudoku, I say in my own defense that this column says nothing about the figure $10.72, economics or conceptions of social justice.It deals instead with a simple claim made by the University administration: that they lack the legal authority to institute a living wage for all University employees by nature of their status as a public university beholden to the will of the state. This argument is mere legal babble, a smokescreen set up by the administration to forestall substantive debate on the issue until pressure on it dies down. If the University, has no intention of working towards a "living wage" or debating the issue, it should say so outright rather than attempting to hide behind flimsy legal reasoning and an absurd charade of helplessness.
In an April 20 letter to the community, University President John Casteen contended, "the State Code places the Rector and Visitors, the corporate entity of the University, under the direct 'control' of the General Assembly." This implies that the Board of Visitors cannot act to change the pay rates of workers employed directly by the University without an express grant from the General Assembly.
The extent of this "control," however, is vague. In the same advisory opinion written by Virginia Deputy Attorney General David Johnson that Casteen cited, it says that the Board of Visitors is able to "make such regulations as they may deem expedient, not being contrary to law." It is quite a stretch to say that requiring an express grant of power to act and simply being unable to do things that are prohibited constitute the same thing.
University spokesperson Carol Wood explained, "There are 'state pay practices' that allow an institution to implement salary increases from sources other than
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