This week Colgate’s Student Government Association (SGA) be­gan distributing free adhesive iden­tification labels for students’ jackets in the O’Connor Campus Center (Coop). Students can pick up their labels between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. until Friday.

Inspiration for the SGA’s “Jacket Retrieval Program” came from Stu­dent Policy Coordinator for Village Relations, senior David Berger. Berger worked closely with senior Jon Knowlton on the project, who said he was concerned by the num­ber of jackets that are either lost or stolen in the downtown area.

“There just had to be some kind of simple, yet effective way to deter jacket theft or to get lost or stolen jackets returned to their owners,” Knowlton said.

As a result, the SGA decided to order labels for student jackets with a space for students’ names and e-mail addresses underneath the SGA logo. Knowlton negoti­ated the price of the labels with a clothing label company called BCI. The SGA paid $499 from its discretionary budget for 1,000 la­bels. If the program is successful, Knowlton said that the SGA will revisit the idea of ordering more labels next year.

“We didn’t want to apply to the Student Senate for an ex­tra budget until we understand whether the program is effective,” Knowlton said.

Students who recover a jacket with an SGA label on it are in­structed to return the jacket to Campus Safety. Campus Safety of­ficers will then notify the owner. Knowlton said the SGA will be monitoring how many labeled jack­ets are returned to Campus Safety and recovered as a benchmark of the program’s success.

The Jacket Retrieval Program is the newest addition to the SGA’s “Do the Right Thing” program, which began this past fall as the re­sult of collaboration between SGA President and senior Liz Brodsky, Vice President and senior Mike Newberg and Vice President and Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson. Last fall, the “Do the Right Thing” program was respon­sible for bringing new medical am­nesty and Good Samaritan policies to Colgate.