Class of 2022 gift puts sanitary products within reach

By Juanita I.C. Traughber, Communications Director

The Class of 2022’s lasting mark has been installed through their alma mater. The Operations Department installed nine sanitary product dispenses throughout campus over the last weekend of the academic year. The dispensers put free tampons and pads within reach of Middle and High School students.

For many years, the Senior Class Council has allocated unused money from its class fund to benefit future generations of students coming behind them. Graduating classes in recent years have gifted USN glass boards in the library and study rooms and coves across campus to help increase productivity and community building among younger peers, hydration stations to encourage the use of refillable water bottles, a speaker system for the River Campus, a mural, and outdoor benches.

One in five menstruating students has missed school because of a lack of personal hygiene products, accounting to Aunt Flow, the dispenser company. Those menstruating in Tennessee also are subject to the “pink tax,” pads and tampons are taxed as luxury items. Although the USN Health Room has long been a refuge for students needing these products, the Class of 2022’s gift funding for these dispensers allows students to avoid the embarrassment of walking through hallways with these necessities. 

The idea for the Class of 2022’s gift began with Libin Abdulle ’26, Maeve Stevenson ’26, and Lin Zheng ’26, who proposed putting menstrual product dispensers in the girls' restrooms on the Edgehill Campus during their Eighth Grade Change Project. Following coverage on the school's official Instagram account and the High School student-run newspaper, The Peabody Press, led to a schoolwide conversation. While Operations staff worked through logistics during the 2022-2023 academic year, a group of parents began leaving the necessities in restrooms throughout the school, signing their baskets as “The Moms.”

The school operating budget will keep the new ADA-compliant dispensers stocked with organic cotton pads and tampons.