Student Senate hopes to continue year-long project
Will free menstrual products continue to be provided for students? PHOTO CREDIT: Maddie Bataille | Photo Editor
When the program was initially started, the Senate hoped that the University would step in to fund the project in the future. Yet a year later, this initiative is still being fully funded by the Senate.
Carl Stiles, the director of Memorial Union and advisor of the Student Senate, said that the future of the program is currently up to the students.
“[The Senate is] the funding source for the program currently,” Stiles said. “So, they probably will do some future endeavors with URI to see if there’s an opportunity for better funding as part of the budget process.”
He continued to say that in order to add more products to the other buildings, it would need to be a planned, coordinated effort with possible help from Health Services and some of the academic operators for the other buildings, as he only oversees the Memorial Union.
“I certainly think that there’s an opportunity for some advocacy from the student body to bring it forth and support all the initiatives from students on it,” Stiles said. “Basically, it is just about being visible and advocating and asking for the products.”
According to Student Senate Vice President Emily Gamache, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) passed a bill last year saying that all K-12 schools that are state funded need to provide menstrual products in bathrooms. However, as a higher education facility, URI doesn’t have to meet this requirement.
“We passed a resolution as a Senate last semester, requesting funds for Aunt Flow, a company that supplies menstrual products to schools and other companies, to be funded by the University,” Gamache said. “So, the next step for the campus committee is to address that resolution at the Faculty Senate level.”
The resolution states that the student body requests funding from URI for free products in all campus building bathrooms. They feel as though this University should be funding these products, according to Gamache.
Now that they’ve written out the bill and it has passed through the Student Senate, it’s up to the Faculty Senate to either pass or reject the resolution for this initiative.
“The budget though, is challenging and that’s why it didn’t pass last year because it needs to be incorporated into the budget,” Gamache said. “When it does, we hopefully will have this resolution at hand.”
Gamache added that the administration has not started funding the program because the Faculty Senate hasn’t passed the resolution themselves. Once that happens, free products would be seen not only in the Memorial Union, but in buildings with classroom settings too, according to her.
“It’s more so if I’m in a classroom or a building where I can’t quickly run to my dorm, I can easily grab it from a nearby building,” Gamche said. “But there are a lot of buildings on campus near dorms so hopefully students can feel that they can go into those buildings.”
According to her, when this resolution is brought to the Faculty Senate it would be helpful to have students voice their opinions.
Gamache hopes that the Faculty Senate will pass this resolution as a step towards seeing free menstrual products in bathrooms all across campus for use.