If you are a University of Oregon student who’s been arrested or received a citation while protesting, you are probably eligible to receive free legal services, courtesy of the Associated Students of the University of Oregon.
ASUO offers legal services to all students enrolled in UO courses who pay their incidental fee. The incidental fee funds ASUO Legal Services, along with many other services like Safe Ride, the Women’s Center and student organizations.
ASUO Legal Services provides support in misdemeanor criminal representation, family law and landlord-tenant issues. Those are the three main categories of assistance, according to Ilona Givens, director of ASUO Legal Services. “We put out small fires,” Givens said. “Sometimes we put out larger fires, but we’re here to support students in as compassionate a way and non-judgemental way as we can.”
ASUO Legal Services currently assists “less than 10” students with offenses related to protesting, Givens said.
“By assisting students with a wide variety of legal problems that students may encounter during their education,” she said, “they can be more successful in attending, passing their classes and finally graduating.”
As a result of recent demonstrations, ASUO asked Givens if the legal office offered services to students arrested at protests. “We’ve always offered these services,” she said. “This is not something new that came out of the death of George Floyd or the prominence of Black Lives Matter protests.”
UO has a history of student involvement in protests, beyond the recent death of George Floyd. ASUO Legal Services represented students who were charged with offenses during the Critical Mass demonstrations that brought awareness to sustainable transportation, air quality and climate change issues in 2006.
Some former UO students also participated in anti-war protests during the Iraq War, and against CIA recruitment on campus in the mid-1980s due to its “covert activities in Central America and, as I recall, discrimination in hiring LGBTQ applicants,” Givens said.
In 1965, college students across the country participated in protests against the Vietnam War. UO students began organizing, asking the university for legal assistance, which led to the development of ASUO Legal Services, according to Givens.
“The Vietnam War and the protests that grew up around it were definitely more than incidental to the birth and growth of student legal services offices not just at this university but all over the country and particularly on the West Coast,” Givens said.
Although students have not requested this service recently, the legal office frequently assisted students in the past who organized protests to understand their rights, civil disobedience techniques and what to do when approached by law enforcement.
“If students are involved in protests and feel their rights have been violated in some way,” Givens said, “then they’re also welcome to come talk to us about what they might be able to do about the violation of those rights.”
Givens said peaceful protests are most effective when fighting for a cause.
“Our constitution — state and federal — allow us the freedom of peaceable assembly and to bring our grievances to the government,” Givens said. “I’m a strong advocate of that right, so I would tell people, yes, if you feel strongly about something and you find yourself wanting to join a protest, learn as much as you can about that protest when you’re getting involved in it and know what the end goal is.”
