On Wednesday, faculty and other speakers held a teach-in to support the campaign to raise the University minimum hiring rate. Thursday evening featured the public reading of a letter signed by more than 200 faculty, calling for President Casteen “to engage the question of a living wage for all workers at the University.” The events were the latest in a series of demonstrations following last week’s sit-in at Madison Hall, which ended on April 15 with the arrest of 17 students. Also on April 20, Casteen issued a letter to the community, available on the Competitive Compensation Issues Web site.

U.Va. News Services/Photo: Dan Addison

Landscape architect and University of Virginia alumnus Michael Vergason (above), will give the School of Architecture/Thomas Jefferson Foundation Visiting Professor Lecture on Friday at 5 p.m. in Campbell Hall, Room 153. He will lecture on “Recent Work” produced by his firm, Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, a small firm that specializes in site planning and landscape architecture, with an emphasis on the seamless integration of the built and natural environments. Current works include a number of campus plans with Ayers Saint Gross Architects including work at Johns Hopkins University, U.Va. and the University of Notre Dame. Full story.

U.Va. News Services

Opera Viva, the University of Virginia’s first student opera company, in association with the McIntire Department of Music, the University Programs Council, and Newcomb Hall, will present George Bizet’s “Carmen” (above), on Friday and Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Newcomb Hall Courtyard. This production will feature the opera’s original dialogue, as intended by Bizet, with an entirely new English translation of both the dialogue and the verse, created by the students who took last semester’s course. Tickets are free and will be available at the Newcomb Hall Box Office at (434) 924-8808, and at the door.