TODAY, as we inaugurate our first female president, we can be proud of the progress this university has made toward overcoming its history of exclusion. However, as much as things have changed, the date April 15 also should remind us that some calls for justice have gone unanswered for far too long.
On April 15, 1998, faculty, staff, students and Charlottesville residents united to a launch a campaign for a living wage to ensure all employees at this university would be be paid wages commensurate with the basic cost of living in Charlottesville. Their call for justice echoed those delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he visited Charlottesville in 1963.
The group's protests for economic justice were not new to the University either.