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Students petition to improve the quality of menstrual products at USU

In the summer of 2021, Utah State University became the first university in Utah to offer free menstrual hygiene products in women’s restrooms. After more than a year, the quality of those hygiene products has been questioned by those who use them.

A political sociology class at USU has started a project called “It’s Normal… Period,” which aims to improve the quality and availability of free menstrual products across campus. According to sociology professor and the coordinator for this project, Mehmet Soyer, their plan is to petition the university to increase menstrual product quality and to make them available in gender-neutral restrooms.

“The goal of the project is to raise awareness about the menstrual products on campus. This is a student-driven project in my political sociology class with an applied learning approach,” Mehmet said.

Utah State University spends approximately $600 a year for menstrual products across all campus’ restrooms. Jasmine Morales, co-leader for this project, wants people who menstruate to ask themselves how much they are spending a month on period products — and if $600 a year seems like a reasonable amount considering the approximately 12,000 female students, as of fall 2021, who attend the Logan campus.

“We are very grateful that we actually have some products, but they are not the best quality. So a lot of people end up not using them or make use of them just because. We get cardboard inserts for tampons, or not really not the best quality pads. So if we're offering this to students, and we're spending this $600, and it's not being used, we might as well spend a little bit more. Maybe expand the budget and get better products so people can actually use these products,” Morales said.

Menstrual hygiene products were laid out on a table at the Taggart Student Center building this past week to show students the product that is currently offered in contrast to those of higher quality.

Gabby Dobson, one of the proposers for the project, said raising awareness is personal for her.

“I took my own struggle as a woman and the period products and the menstrual injustice that I face, and kind of introduced intersectionality into that, and we came up with this project,” Dobson said.

More than 100 students have shared their input through a survey created by members of this project, sponsored by the Center for Intersectionality, to narrow down the needs of students and present a formal petition to the university.

For more information about the project and how to get involved, send an email to mehmet.soyer@usu.edu.

Manuel Giron produces news content at UPR. As a bilingual reporter, he writes stories in English and Spanish, and is involved in all steps of the reporting process from thinking of story ideas to writing the stories and preparing them for air. He is a Senior at Utah State University majoring in Political Science and minoring in Portuguese. He loves to write, read, listen to music, and swim. He is incredibly excited about working for UPR and learning about journalism in the process.