The Student Union's Office of Student Rights and Advocacy plans to hand out 500 "Know Your Rights" magnets in an effort to increase campus awareness about student rights, as well as to provide information about where students can turn for guidance if they are required to go through the University's judicial process, according to Student Union President Jason Gray '10.According to Director of OSRA Laura Cohen '09, the magnets will be ordered in the next few days and will arrive within one to two weeks. Cohen hopes to begin handing out the magnets shortly after that but said they would definitely be handed out by Thanksgiving.

The Office of Student Rights and Advocacy, including newly appointed Coordinator for Academic Integrity Vanessa Kerr '11, Coordinator for Residence Life Anna Hanley '11, Coordinator for Campus Safety Brandon Chu '09 and Coordinator for Speech and Protest Lev Hirschhorn '11, as well as the Social Justice Committee, will be handing the magnets out, Cohen said.

She added, "We will definitely be going through all [first-year] dorms and probably through the sophomore dorms as well. We will be talking about what the magnet is, what [students'] rights are, who [students] can contact in my office."

There will also be magnets available at the front desk of the Student Union office, she said.

Cohen said, "The magnet that we're putting out is specifically about student rights during the hearing process. All of the rights on our card are the same rights as the rights in Rights and Responsibilities and the Student Bill of Rights."

The rights that will be listed on the magnet include the right to an adviser throughout the conduct process, the right to written notification of charges, the right to know the name of your accuser, the right to see all evidence that will be used against you before your hearing, the right to present evidence and witnesses and the right not to testify against yourself or "self-incriminate" unless an imminent threat to life or limb of an individual exists.

She also said, "The way the rights are written on the magnet and in the Bill of Rights is just a more straightforward way than the way the rights are written in Rights and Responsibilities."

Cohen said that the Union asked Director of Student Development and Conduct Erika Lamarre to "look over the majority of what we had on the magnet. She looked through what we wrote and verified that what we had written matched what Rights and Responsibilities said."

Gray said that the magnet also provides publicity in the form of contact information and awareness about the Office of Student Rights so that students who are going through the conduct process "can get peer-to-peer, confidential, rights-related assistance."

The "Know Your Rights" magnets will act as a precautionary measure to make sure students are aware of their rights in the judicial process. "We don't think there's any big issue, . but in the rare event that someone is accused, they have to know their rights, and that's why we think this is of the utmost importance," said Student Union Director of Communication Jamie Ansorge '09.

According to Gray, these magnets are part of the current union administration's commitment to defending student rights. This effort includes the Student Bill of Rights, which was created to ensure "that the rights that students are afforded are the rights that students ought to have." Gray also explained that the Union will improve its "ability to provide any peer-to-peer advisory services to students."

As components of this commitment, Gray proposed the Student Bill of Rights, then reorganized and renamed OSRA to provide advisory services and also helped create the "Know Your Rights" magnets. The "Know Your Rights" magnets are encompassed in the third aspect of the Union's effort to increase student awareness of student rights, which focuses on providing students with more information on the issue.

Gray believes that the magnets will "prime the issue of rights in the minds of students and will get students more actively engaged in the rights defense process."

By using the magnets, "everyone will know what their rights are, especially the accused," Ansorge said.

-Jillian Wagner contributed reporting.