Lafayette College student Sophie Himmel was perched on a platform, wielding a bullhorn, speaking passionately to 80 people at her school in Easton.
She was throwing her support behind the need for easy access to free menstrual products on Lafayette’s campus.
“I think menstrual equity is a health concern and a dignity concern,” said Emily Mackin, an Upper Saucon Township resident and a member of Lafayette for Reproductive Autonomy, Justice, and Empowerment. Himmel is president of that student organization.
The March 22, 2024, demonstration organized by Himmel is an offshoot of a national movement to eradicate “period poverty,” where a lack of access to menstrual products disrupts the lives and threatens the health of millions of women.
In just a few years, women have raised the profile of the problem to the point where public health officials are listening. All of the Lehigh Valley colleges surveyed by lehighvalleylive.com -- including Lafayette -- offer some access to free menstrual products.
About two-thirds of the low-income women surveyed for a 2019 study in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology had to go without menstrual products at some point the previous year because they couldn’t afford them. They made do with cloth, rags, tissues or toilet paper. Some used children’s diapers or paper towels taken from public bathrooms, the study says.
The New Jersey legislature addressed period poverty with laws this year mandating menstrual products in public school bathrooms and homeless shelters. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to make the products free in Pennsylvania public schools as part of his 2024-25 budget.
While many college students come from middle- or upper-class incomes, some scholarship students struggle to pay living expenses and would directly benefit from free menstrual products, the Lafayette students say.
Even students from middle-income homes can find budgets stretched when they and their families are paying college tuition. Students like Himmel and Mackin say free menstrual products are an expense colleges are obliged to cover.
“Your menstrual cycle should never affect your ability to be involved in your studies,” Mackin said.
Lafayette College students make signs on March 21, 2024, in anticipation of a demonstration March 22, 2024, to make menstrual products readily available on the Easton college's campus.Photo courtesy of Lafayette College student Sophie Himmel
Local colleges agree.
Lehigh University in Bethlehem provides free tampons and pads in most non-residential buildings around campus, according to Interim Director of Media Relations Amy White. The school also offers them in the campus food pantry, she said. They can also sign up to receive environmentally-sustainable, reusable products through a partnership with the university’s Office of Sustainability and Center for Gender Equity.
Muhlenberg College in Allentown offers free menstrual products in the student union, the health center, the Egner Chapel lounge and the Muhlenberg Useful Living Essentials (M.U.L.E.) Community Cabinet, which provides food items and hygiene products for all Muhlenberg students, according to spokeswoman Kristine Yahna Todaro.
At Moravian University in Bethlehem, women can get products at Mo’s Cupboard, the school’s food and resource pantry, according to spokesman Michael Corr.
Volunteers working to eradicate period poverty on campuses say it’s not enough to provide menstrual products at just one “food pantry” or health center. There’s a stigma attached with going to a food pantry for help. And the need is far greater than the supply available at just one campus spot, according to Morgan Flagg-Detwiler. She’s the First Year Experience Administrator at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem Township.
She spearheaded a movement to provide menstrual products across the community college campus. She became the women’s club advisor in 2022. The club started with her and one student member.
Student Carrie Fuller and Flagg-Detwiler followed their passion to end period poverty by collecting donated menstrual products and distributing them to the school’s 27 bathrooms. They created an amazon.com wish list where people could buy products and have them shipped to the community college.
“Every day I’d come in my office and there was a stack of boxes,” said Flagg-Detwiler, whose office became known tongue-in-cheek as the “menstruation station.”
It became unfeasible for Fuller and Flagg-Detwiler to keep filling bathroom dispensers.
“It was insane. We could not keep those boxes stocked,” Flagg-Detwiler said.
They whittled down the number of bathrooms serviced to the ones with the most demand. When they noticed supply running out quickly in particular bathrooms, they left fliers to connect with women to help directly meet their needs. They either supplied them with products directly or directed them to the college food pantry for a month’s supply of products, Flagg-Detwiler said.
Then they went to the college for help. Administrators agreed to make menstrual product distribution a college issue, not a volunteer issue.
“They all believed we had a good argument that this has something to do with equity. Equity is a huge part of a community college,” Flagg-Detwiler said.
The volunteers and the college are negotiating the logistics. They’re considering whether to outsource supply and distribution of the products. They’re considering which bathrooms to stock and whether to put the products in dormitories. The volunteers don’t want the school to skimp on quality.
“We don’t want to buy products that are low quality that could affect someone’s health,” Flagg-Detwiler said. “This is something that’s a necessity. It does make a difference for a lot of young women who just won’t come to school because they don’t have access to these products.”
She said Northampton Community College is on track for campuswide school-supplied menstrual products by the start of the 2024-25 school year.
Lafayette for Reproductive Autonomy, Justice, and Empowerment formed in fall 2021. The club secured funds from student government to put free menstrual product dispensers in 18 bathrooms across Lafayette College’s campus. Then the administration agreed to fund the installation of an additional 20 dispensers in December 2023.
Supplies started running out, though. There’s an impasse over how much funding ought to be committed to stocking the dispensers. The administration has agreed to pay $2,000 a year, according to Lafayette spokesman Scott Morse. The students say an additional $6,000 per year is needed to meet the demand. And the college’s $2,000 is supplied through a grant, which isn’t guaranteed year-to-year, Himmel said.
Morse said the college is willing to revisit the grant amount.
“If further study indicates the current $2,000 annual investment ... is not sufficient, we will address that,” Morse said.
The college has continuously supplied free menstrual products at the Pard pantry, the college’s food pantry for disadvantaged students, according to Morse.
Flagg-Detwiler said feedback on their period poverty project has been overwhelmingly positive. Women commonly find themselves faced with a sudden need for products, scrambling to meet that need while making it to class or a school-related activity on time.
“We did find some endearing notes (in the bathrooms),” Flagg-Detwiler said. “One young woman said, ‘Thank you. This saved me today.”
Another woman wrote: “Whoever put this stuff here, thank you,” and signed it with a heart.
“We knew that this was really needed,” Flagg-Detwiler said. “The problem is much more widespread than people think because people don’t want to have conversations about it.”
Lafayette College student Remy Oktay participates in a demonstration March 22, 2024, to make menstrual products readily available on the Easton college's campus. His booth suggests that if toilet paper is free and available in public restrooms, menstrual products should be too.Photo courtesy of Lafayette College student Sophie Himmel
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Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com.