Last semester, Hamilton College’s Student Assembly created the Menstrual Hygiene Initiative (MHI). It was the brainchild of Cesar Domènech, who was a Class Representitve for the Class of 2020 at the time. His inspiration came during a trip to Brown University for a Model United Nation conference last spring. On this trip, he observed that all of the bathrooms he utilized had baskets of menstrual hygiene products like. pads and tampons.
Impressed by what he saw, Domènech decided to pursue a similar initiative at Hamilton. He felt that this would tangibly benefit the community. Moreover, he believed the College’s small size would make it possible to test-run the idea.
Because of this, Domènech contacted students at Brown University who had worked to implement the program. Working alongside Student Assembly President Nadav Konforty ’20 and Student Assembly representative Jordan D’Addio ’20, Domènech began the process of building a coalition to implement his idea. His plan was to stock all of the first floor residential bathrooms on campus, including male, female, and all-gender facilities. The school was divided into zones, and Student Assembly members volunteered to be in charge of particular zones. In addition, when it became clear the effort would be exhaustive if only Student Assembly members aided in the process, other students stepped in to help. They would take turns restocking supplies bi-weekly. Posters went up announcing the new initiative. A survey was sent out asking students how they liked the new initiative, and the responsive was overwhelmingly positive. Eventually, it became evident that the bathrooms would have to be restocked weekly to meet the demand.
Despite its initial success, however, the problem did suffer some setbacks, as funding was an issue from the outset. The pilot program diverted funds from the Student Assembly budget. This amounted to a signifcant amount of their budget. Connie Lorente ’20 — a member of the Facilities Committee who has played a leading role in the Initiative during Domènech’s absence — explains that it is not “sustainable” to continue to use Student Assembly funding if the initiative is to be permanent, as it is intended to be. Currently, the Student Assembly has put the Initiative on pause and is working with the office of Dean Martinez to obtain special funding. Such funding would not just cover the cost of the hygiene products themselves, but also would go toward the purchasing of dispensers.
Another issue was students taking too many products. This led to needing to restock supplies quite frequently. Lorente had the idea of installing dispensers that have a delay time. She believes this delay time would deter people from taking more product than they actually need. “But, this also costs money,” explains Lorente, reiterating the need for special funding if the initiative is to continue in future semesters.
Additionally, another necessary change to the MHI will be deciding who is actually responsible for refilling the supplies. Lorente finds that the task-force model is “unreliable.”
She explains: “Everyone was really great and dedicated to it. But, being a student creates an obstacle.” She goes on to explain how balancing academic and extracurricular commitments made it difficult to regularly restock the bathrooms. “It would still get done, but it wasn’t as systematic as we would have liked. People very much took turns based on how their weeks were looking. A lot was up in the air.”
Lorente believes that having Physical Plant staff responsible for the restocking would make the initiative much more reliable: “They are much more dependable when it comes to this type of thing than students. It would be just like making sure there is enough toilet paper in restrooms. ”
Physical Plant has since pledged their full support for the initiative pending approval of its funding.
Student Assembly values this Initiative for its pragmatism as well as its message of inclusion. In the words of Konforty ’20, the initiative “intends to be a safety net for people who may simply forget these hygiene products one day.” Lorente mirrored this logic as she described her conversations with Domènech surrounding the initiative: “He just thought, ‘Why should this be another thing stressing students out? We don’t need that. Wouldn’t it be nice if the school did something to alleviate this stress?’”
For Domènech, it seemed so simple and attainable of a solution to make students’ lives on campus easier. However, he also wanted to avoid this program becoming an exclusive one. “We put them [hygiene products] in all the bathrooms because we recognize that menstruation is not an experience that only affects cis-gendered female bodies,” Lorente says. “Cisgender women aren’t the only ones who get their periods. We need to remember that.”
Currently, Student Assembly is in talks with Dean Martinez to receive special funding so that this initiative — currently on pause — may continue in future semesters.
