The ASSU Undergraduate Senate passed two significant advocacy bills at their weekly meeting last night. One bill recommended that the ASSU Legal Counseling Policy Board allow the ASSU Legal Counseling Office to provide advice to students with complaints against the University, its faculty or its staff. The other bill was written to ensure sweat-free labor in factories that produce Stanford apparel.

“The ASSU Legal Counseling Office has turned away cases involving students in dispute with Stanford, its faculty or its staff for more than a decade,” said Senate Campus Advocacy Committee Chair Mondaire Jones ‘09, who authored the legal advocacy bill.

Jones explained that the ASSU recommended the change in policy because the ASSU Legal Counseling Office is a joint special fees group funded by undergraduate and graduate students.

“The ASSU Legal Counseling Office provides counseling services, not trial advocacy,” he said. “We want to be sure that institutions out of court are utilized before going to the next level.”

The bill would also ensure that students who are in dispute with the University but cannot afford legal counsel have a means to resolve their issues, he said.

The second bill passed last night made two recommendations in order to safeguard against sweat-free labor in factories producing apparel that bears the Stanford name.

First, it encouraged the University to switch its membership from the Fair Labor Association to the Worker Rights Consortium, an organization with a stronger stance against sweatshop labor.

Second, the bill urged the University to join the Designated Suppliers Program, which “concentrates apparel manufacture within specific factories in order to make it easier for independent organizations to monitor working conditions,” according to the bill. This would provide a better means for the University to ensure adequate working conditions exist in the factories that produce its apparel, the bill’s proponents said.