On Nov. 11, Brandeis Students for Reproductive Justice and Brandeis Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance authored a statement of progress for their menstrual product campaign and submitted it as an op-ed to The Brandeis Hoot, which I co-signed. The statement of progress outlined the survey that they had created “to gauge students’ views on menstrual product use, availability and pricing on campus” and presented the data that the survey found. Overall, they “found that the quality of products available, inconsistent pricing and availability and financial insecurity were all factors that students cited as inhibiting them from getting the care they needed during menstruation.”
Obviously, this is an amazing development. This is most likely the most comprehensive survey of its type ever done at Brandeis: The survey collected 455 responses from Brandeis students who menstruate, and is part of a continued effort on behalf of the student body to provide aid for people who menstruate. Free menstrual products may soon be implemented on campus, which is something to be celebrated. Though not listed in the article, the current plan is to use a Senate Money Resolution (SMR) from the Student Union to fund the test based on the survey.
However, this does bring up a number of questions, not the least of which is why Brandeis administration, in face of the conversation that is being had regarding access to menstrual products on campus, is not stepping up to address the issue, but is rather leaving it up to the students.
According to Senator Shaquan McDowell ’18, chair of the Campus Operations Working Group (COW-G) Committee, “The COW-G Committee along with student activists are formatting an SMR which will be brought to the Senate. The SMR will be used to fund the beginning of a test that will prove the model proposed to facilities is sustainable. This resolution will fund the initial money needed to start the test, but in the spring, plans will be made to discuss accessing Student Union funds in general for the remainder of the test.” In short, the administration is saying that it does not have faith that such a program would actually bring change to the Brandeis community, and is therefore not planning on acting until students prove that it can be funded and provided free of charge.
This in and of itself raises major concerns about how the Brandeis administration takes the concerns of its students. However, I’m frankly not shocked, given that, when I wrote an opinion article
for The Hoot saying that we shouldn’t be buying new vending machines but rather addressing the need for menstrual products, a top administrator was more concerned with my mistake in who was actually paying for the vending machines than the fact that students still saw this as a legitimate concern that needed to be addressed. Though admittedly the article was incorrect in my assuming that the university paid for the new machines, the fact still remains that this was the part, rather than the needs of the students, which received an actual response from an administrator. It has been more than two months since the original article directed at the administration, saying that students who menstruate deserve the right to free and accessible menstrual products, was published and this has been the closest thing to a response from the administration. That is unacceptable.
At this point, the Brandeis administration has entirely too much to answer for. It is absolutely ridiculous that administration is so unwilling to address this issue themselves that money has to be moved from the Student Union to be able to provide a basic health need. When the statement of progress signed off with, “We continue to move forward with this project with the hopes that the administration works to accommodate the expressed student need,” it shows that there is a concern that, despite the results of the survey and the actions of the proposed SMR, the administration may still choose, for whatever reason, to refuse to provide free menstrual products to its students, and that is a problem. The survey speaks of a student body that has stated time and again that, for various reasons ranging from availability to financial insecurity, they do not always have the access to the products that they need for the menstruation that is entirely out of their control.
Students who menstruate have legitimate concerns and fears, many of which are not being acknowledged by administration, and it is frankly upsetting that this needs to be debated and argued for to begin with. It seems like an obvious right that people who menstruate have consistently asked for, and it’s even worse that none of their concerns were taken seriously until they were written about by someone who has no idea what it feels like to menstruate. But worst of all, it’s absolutely shameful that administration is leaving it up to the students to pay for their own overpriced menstrual products, rather than providing them this right to begin with.
