Sabrina Thaler, Contributing Photographer

Last year, Yale Facilities installed new menstrual product dispensers across campus, following years of student activism. Despite these upgrades, supply and accessibility issues have persisted.

The updated menstrual product dispensers were installed in women’s and gender-neutral restrooms. These dispensers feature free menstrual products accessed via automatic motion sensors. However, a continuing “detrimental issue” has been the inadequate restocking of dispensers, according to Maddy Corson ’26, co-president of YaleBleeds. 

“The trend is sort of the same as last semester, where initially we would know of dispensers being restocked, and then as the weeks go on, more and more people come to us saying the dispensers weren’t really restocked,” Corson said. “One of the priorities for YaleBleeds this semester is to ensure that folks can rely on these period product dispensers wherever they go and that people have access to free period products whenever they’re needed.”

Corson explained that she and YaleBleeds co-president Itxel Sanchez Baez ’26 have been discussing the current stocking issues with Facilities offices and the Local 35 custodial staff union. 

According to Corson, both groups are supportive of the student efforts to resolve menstrual product supply issues and install small trash cans in each stall for easy disposal. Corson added that recent staffing changes within the Facilities administration may have delayed the initiative. 

“When we brought this back to the Yale facilities administrators outside of the custodial union, they had said that restocking shouldn’t be a problem. And so right now, we’re in a bit of a limbo state with hoping that they will be restocked, but also wanting to be respectful of the other tasks and responsibilities that fall on our amazing custodial staff at Yale,” Corson noted. 

According to Chrishan Fernando, a GPSS Natural Sciences Senator and a founding member of the GPSS Period Project, raising issues about the accessibility of menstrual products with administrators has been challenging.

“It’s not even that they’re wholly opposed to it, but I feel like they don’t feel that it’s as important as we think it is, so they’re not really prioritizing it,” Fernando said.

Yale Facilities did not respond to requests for comment regarding the restocking issues. 

Fernando explained that the push to increase the availability of period products started as a data survey to exhibit the need for menstrual products to the administration.

“We weren’t really putting them in G and P student specific locations, we were putting them in places where anybody could access them and we were finding that even faculty, staff, undergrads– everybody was using these products,” Fernando.

Prior to last year’s installation of dispensers, the YCC has provided menstrual products in residential college bathrooms since 2019. Beginning in 2018, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate has supplied free menstrual products within the graduate and professional schools.

YCC senator and YaleBleeds member Emily Hettinger ’26 told the News that the installation of menstrual product dispensers in the restrooms of university buildings marks the culmination of years of advocacy by YaleBleeds and the YCC.

“Their installation was a huge success, but simply having dispensers on the wall isn’t enough when they aren’t consistently filled with products,” Hettinger wrote. “Every restroom on Yale’s campus has well-stocked toilet paper, so why can’t they all have well-stocked menstrual products?” 

YaleBleeds was founded in 2018.

ABIGAIL PLANTS