Who We Are
The Office of Advocacy is primarily student fee-funded and has been supporting students with university-related issues for over 20 years. Our professional staff are here to support you alongside a group of peer advocates who are trained to help from a student perspective.
Our Services
Professional
Advocacy
Our professional staff work with students on a variety of high-stakes issues, especially when there is a risk that a student may be separated from the university.
They also work to develop collegial relationships with faculty and staff to better address students' educational progress and overall wellbeing.
Peer Advocacy
Peer advocates are students just like you. They have completed formal training to develop their empathetic listening, motivational interviewing, and ability to work across differences.
Peer advocates often help students who are accused of academic misconduct, or who need help filing a grade appeal or other academic petition.
Policy & Education
We work alongside a variety of campus units to improve policies and processes that impact students, particularly when there are disparate impacts that may have been overlooked.
We also educate students, faculty and staff about student rights and responsibilities.
A Legacy, Decades in the Making...
Beginning in the mid-1980s, ASOSU Student Government became interested in creating a advocacy center for students. Students wanted to bring in an attorney who could support their programs and initiatives, as well as offer advice and support. After lobbying and gaining support for the position, in 1988, they officially created and established an office then called the ASOSU Office of Legal Advocacy.
In its first decade, the office was solely a legal practice dedicated to helping students with legal issues outside of the university. These attorneys focused on landlord-tenant issues, consumer problems, credit issues, personal injuries and car accidents, traffic violations, wills, divorces, and names changes for students. They also offered legal advice and consulted with student government. These legal functions are still maintained today through the ASOSU Student Legal Services contract.
However, there was still an unmet need: students had no way of being represented when the other party to their dispute was Oregon State University itself. Student government addressed this problem and in the year 2000, directed our office to hire a professional Student Advocate whose focus was to provide support and guidance to students when they faced a problem with the university or one of its administrative units.
Over the next decade, the office expanded its role through outreach and collaboration with other units on campus. In 2010, our office was renamed the ASOSU Office of Advocacy in an effort to distinguish our services from those of Student Legal Services. In the spring of 2015, the Office of Advocacy moved from the aging Snell Hall into the newly created Student Experience Center.
One of our proudest achievements beyond individual client issues has been our longstanding and ongoing work on the Student Bill of Rights. Student staff in the Office of Advocacy provided crucial research to develop the list of rights that was agreed to in 2017 across all three pillars of shared governance: the ASOSU Student Government, the Faculty Senate and the University President. Later, across two years of work, students in the office successfully advocated for all course syllabi to reference these crucial rights. More recently, we have made translations available to better ensure all students can understand and stand up for their rights.
Today, the original purpose and goals of the office are still central to its practice. We continues to support student’s voices and advocate for their interests. Our office was created by students, for students, and it is through their continued efforts that we have survived, thrived and continue to evolve.