Albany Students association pushes for free period products
Albany Student Association will soon distribute 100 free sanitary products boxes in bathrooms across the Albany campus, leading an initiative to fight student period poverty on Massey campuses.
After ASA Vice President Michaela Fuller made enquires to get access to sanitary products made more available to students, she was able to secure the sanitary products free of cost from a New Zealand company called Organic Initiative (OI). “I asked them if they would be willing to have some kind of sponsorship with Massey Albany, and they very kindly offered to give us some boxes of 100 different products, and a range of different products… At Albany’s students’ association, we don’t have huge funds to go out and purchase those products ourselves,” Michaela said.
This follows a recent government announcement that free period products will be distributed to intermediate and high schools nationwide in June. Michaela was encouraged by the move but wanted to see more done for students in tertiary education. She told Massive, “What I am trying to initiate at Massey Albany is getting free period products in the bathrooms.”
Current initiatives for the distribution and subsidizing of sanitary products to students include the Wā Collective, which subsidises and provides free menstrual cups for students, and the Massey health and counselling services, which already provide free sanitary products that students can access on request without any appointment. Michaela says these are both a good start but recognises that menstrual cups may not be the product for everyone and getting sanitary products from the University health services may not always be convenient. “You go to the bathroom and you’re like ‘oh shit I have my period’ and you need a product in a rush. If you don’t have one, you’re probably not going to haul your ass up to health and counselling or you might not feel comfortable going in and having that conversation.”
Michaela aims to distribute the four different types of free sanitary products at around ten different gender diverse bathrooms on the Albany campus to make it easier for anyone in need to access the products. She hopes to soon discuss further with OI and the presidents of the other Massey student associations about potentially expanding an initiative to the other campuses. “I would like to extend that [the initiative] out to events and stuff on campus as well, like education or just any questions that people have, just like interesting panels and stuff like that.”
Massey University Student Association (MUSA) president Fatima Imran says that the MUSA Executive is currently discussing strategies to implement a similar initiative but is yet to begin a plan, while Massey at Wellington Students' Association (MAWSA) president Tessa Guest says MAWSA is currently in a similar situation to MUSA. Tessa says, “I know that other student associations like VUSWA do supply that out of their own budget as far as I am aware, but we’re much smaller and we have less resources, so that’s not a sustainable outcome for us, but we are really interested and excited to look into other ways to make this happen for students.”
First year Massey student Grace Gilinsky believes that she has seen machines that have tampons and pads available in bathrooms on the Wellington campus at a cost, but nothing that was free. Student Caleb MacDonald agrees that sanitary products appear to be less available for women. “They throw out condoms left, right and centre, but I haven’t seen any tampons or pads out.”