At the start of the Spring 2025 semester, the Women’s & Gender Resource Center (WGRC) will distribute menstrual supplies in public restrooms across campus.
Katie Schweighofer, director of the WGRC, said that the idea to organize this effort came from several sources, such as the Wellness Center and individual students who saw this as an important issue.
“What we need to do is actually make this [an] institutional change,” Schweighofer said. Several groups have organized similar efforts before, which Schweighofer described as “unreliable.”
“You will not walk into a single restroom on this campus and not have toilet paper; we take care of everybody that way, it’s a basic necessity,” Schweighofer said. “The shift in thinking here is really moving tampons and sanitary napkins into that category. This is just a basic supply, it will be readily available.”
The products, which include tampons and pads, will be available from dispensers across campus. These dispensers will be new additions to some bathrooms, while replacing old, out-of-order dispensers in others.
Products will be available in women’s and inclusive restrooms in eleven buildings across campus. These buildings include: ATS, Althouse, Denny, East College, the HUB, Kaufman, the Kline Center, the Rector-Tome Complex, Stern, the Waidner-Spahr Library and the Weiss Arts Center.
“These are a community resource,” Schweighofer said. “If someone needs a bunch of them, they should take a bunch of them,” but she advised that individuals should not “waste them” if they do not need them.
Funding for the project came from the WGRC, as well as Student Senate and the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Student workers with the WGRC will restock the dispensers throughoutthe Spring 2025 semester, and in the 2025-26 academic year, restocking the dispensers will become part of housekeeping’s work.
This initiative comes as several states have expanded access to menstrual products in public schools. Pennsylvania joined this group of states in September, when $3 million from the state budget was allocated to purchase period products for public schools.
