These Girls Want Free Menstrual Products on Campus. Period.

Image credit: Nicole O'Neill for The Campus Trainer

Periods can be stressful, messy and uncomfortable. The cost of feminine hygiene products only adds to the burden of a monthly cycle. Get Ovary It, a group of female students, is campaigning for the University of Maryland to provide free feminine hygiene products in bathrooms across campus.

Organized by five girls: Zoe Weisberg, Claire Mudd, Hailey Chaiken, Hope Kahn and Lauren Anikis, the project was the brainchild of UMD’s School of Public Policy’s Innovation and Social Change: Do Good Now class. This class allows groups of students to focus on issues that interest them and develop semester-long projects to solve important problems.

Get Ovary It is focusing on increasing accessibility to feminine hygiene products in the university’s bathrooms. The group’s ultimate goal is for every campus bathroom to have free feminine hygiene products instead of selling products in dispensers for 25 cents.

“Menstrual products are expensive and should be the last thing broke college students should worry about,” said Zoe Weisburg, a Get Ovary It member and freshman marketing major.

The group has already conducted small experiments to test the effectiveness of their project. This consisted of putting a basket of free menstrual products overnight in campus bathrooms in locations such as McKeldin Library, Knight Hall and Brendan Iribe Center. The next day, the group checked back on these locations and noticed that some, but not all, of the products had been taken, which signaled that no one would abuse access to the free products, according to Weisburg

“I just get so angry when I think about how annoying periods are and how much they affect my life, especially when I see people like my brother who never in his life has had to even consider some of the things that I do every month,” said Claire Mudd, a Get Ovary It team member and senior accounting major. “It just really frustrates me,” she added.

Each team member is passionate about this project and was inspired to spearhead this initiative as a result of their unique experiences.

Mudd recalled a time where she unexpectedly got her period during the day and couldn’t make it to the bathroom in Stamp until a few hours later. The advertised 25 cent dispensing machine, to her relief, turned out to be free. She believes free products in every bathroom would relieve the stress on many students who experience periods and help students who may have limited access to menstrual products, like commuters.

The group wants to eliminate the stigma surrounding feminine hygiene products and increase health awareness around campus. People who menstruate can be at risk of illnesses such as toxic shock syndrome or yeast infections because they might not have access to new products to replace the ones they are using, according to Free The Tampons.

“I think it’s really great that those organizations are working to make feminine hygiene products normalized across UMD,” said senior dance and integrated health and wellness major Sarah Budlow. “It would be great if those products were free.”

The team has conducted thorough research through polls and questionnaires to gauge the demand of their project. The team randomly surveyed 51 students. They found that 45% of UMD students have been worried about the cost of feminine hygiene products and 59% of UMD students think that lack of access to these products on campus is an issue.

The organizers of Get Ovary It are planning to continue their project after the semester ends. They have applied for a facilities grant with support from other UMD organizations, such as the UMD chapter of PERIOD, to fund Aunt Flow feminine hygiene products in 15 bathrooms across campus, according to Hailey Chaiken, a Get Ovary It team member and sophomore communications major. Aunt Flow is a company dedicated to providing their free menstrual products to communities in need. If the 15 bathrooms are successful, they would like to expand their project to 100 bathrooms and eventually all bathrooms on the UMD campus.

PERIOD is a group on campus that hosts product drives and delivers donations to low-income or homeless shelters in the Prince George’s County area. Get Ovary It and PERIOD are currently working together to lobby in front of the Student Government Association. PERIOD wrote a letter in support of Get Ovary It's grant application.

“The mission of Get Ovary It and our chapter simply aligned,” said PERIOD vice president and sophomore physiology and neurobiology major Shika Inala. “We want to provide better access to products to our student body.”

The group is trying to gather more support for their project. They even released a petition for free menstrual products on Oct. 5 that already has close to 200 signatures, according to Mudd. The petition can be accessed here.

The Get Ovary It team wishes to continue to spread awareness, educate others and eventually achieve their goal of free feminine hygiene products in all bathrooms across UMD’s campus.

“We want free menstrual products on campus to be as commonplace as soap, toilet paper, and other bathroom necessities,” Mudd said.