At 7:30 am, my alarm clock, Shrilly, told me it was time to rush to my eight o’clock class. After that, I have another class, after that, I ran to my third consecutive class, unable to make time for even a bite to eat. Yet in this state of perpetual rushing, my body found time for another little surprise. For anyone who has ever experienced a period, you know the horror when Mother Nature decides to bring her ugly but monthly gift in a fit of rushing and tasks. It was in this very circumstance I found myself, rushing from bathroom to bathroom on my college campus, looking for a means of safety from Aunt Flow…
In my fruitless twenty minute struggle, I could have been learning about protein complexes and preparing for my next test. I could have been taking notes and asking questions, but no, I was busy searching. After a whole year at Pomona, I have never found one women’s restroom that provides feminine products. However, I can tell you every place that has a bowl of free condoms. Not that I have seen them all, but it’s pretty easy to assume their whereabouts when every freshman hallway has a free bowl. When the bowls are empty, there’s a whole office that is fully stocked with every type a person may need, and each bowl only need be refilled. There’s free colored ones, free normal ones, and free ones that I do not even know what they do. Everywhere there are free condoms, yet no sign of any feminine products for a vital biological process that half the student body faces.
It did not matter that I am usually prepared for these circumstances, and my body did not care that I was working off four hours of sleep as I completed my sixth hour of class. No, all that mattered was that I was rushing from bathroom to bathroom while I was supposed to be in my biology class, looking for a clean tampon.
Perhaps I am crazy and I just have not found the bathrooms where they are located, but a person should not have to miss class time when they are in an emergency menstrual situation. It should not be so hard to find tampons on campus when there are free condoms abounding throughout the school.
Despite the myths presented by the tampon companies that illustrate a woman’s time of the month as a time of frolicking through flowers in white dresses, menstruating is not a walk in the park. We get caught by surprise and are sometimes found unprepared, but apparently if you are caught in that situation, you have to take the ten minute walk back to your room. It is up to you to leave class, missing vital information, to fix the situation. If you want to have sex, the school has you covered, but if you are caught off guard by your period, well, you're on your own. Good luck.
