Brown University Will Provide Free Tampons and Pads to All Gender Identities

Brown University will provide all students, regardless of gender identity, with free tampons and pads this year, the Huffington Post reported.

The Ivy League university‘s undergraduate student council spearheaded the initiative, and students will restock tampons and pads each week in a number of non-residential women’s, men’s, and gender inclusive bathrooms around the Providence, R.I. campus. The council is also in talks with the administration to add sanitary disposal bins to men’s bathrooms.

Follow Motto on Facebook.

“We wanted people to recognize that this issue affects trans students as well and that menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and that not all people who identify as women menstruate,” Viet Nguyen, the president of Brown’s student council, told the Huffington Post.

Brown’s student-run finance board is also funding the initiative, though Nguyen said he hopes the University will ultimately help with funding and re-stocking the products.

“The UCS students took tremendous initiative in the effort to provide tampons and sanitary products in restrooms on campus,” Brown University said in a statement to Huffington Post, adding that it would monitor the effectiveness of the project.

The Brown initiative comes after students at University of California, Los Angeles, Emory University and Columbia University pushed for their schools to provide students with free menstrual care products, and the introduction of bills to end “luxury” taxes on menstrual products in a number of states across the country, including New York, Illinois and Ohio.

[The Huffington Post]