Menstrual Equity Project
Making Harvard 100% Period Secure
The project Making Harvard 100% Period Secure was sponsored by the Office of Physical Planning and Resources in 2021. Project Founder and Student Lead, Shruthi Kumar ‘24, brought together student groups on campus, higher administration, and various maintenance teams across campus to see the project through completion. The main Administrative Leads for the project were Matthew Stec, FAS Senior Director of Facilities Operations and Nancy Hodge, Associate Director of Residential Facilities.
As the Senior Director of Facilities Operations, Matt is responsible for operations of labs, classrooms and residential facilities. Matt is a veteran of the US Navy and earned a Master’s Degree in Management from the Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education.
As the Associate Director of FAS Residential Facilities, Nancy Hodge leads the team responsible for managing daily residential facility operations at Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Nancy has been working in higher education for over twenty years and is passionate about providing students with a safe and well maintained living environment. Nancy earned an MBA from University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The Original Story
As Secretary of the Health, Safety, and Wellbeing Committee of the Harvard Undergraduate Council, Kumar passed legislation through the UC with a unanimous vote to secure funding for this project. The UC dissolved in the Spring of 2022, but Kumar decided to continue the project independent of the UC in order to institionalize funding and systemic maintenance for menstrual products within Harvard’s Office of Physical Planning and Resources.
Phase I: Landscape Analysis
First, the team conducted a landscape analysis of the campus. Building managers and custodial staff examined blueprints from buildings across campus, creating a database of all the bathrooms. The database included data on if the bathrooms had menstrual product disposers, if they were free and accessible, or if they required coinage. In total, this database had over 1,700 datapoints on bathrooms and menstrual product dispensers across campus.
Phase II: Quality Check
The OPRP team in collabroation with Harvard Procurement and Operations teams negotiated with third-party vendors for menstrual products which met students' needs. The team had coversations with local distributors of sanitary products such as The Durkin Company, the largest national distributor, Hospeco, and smaller start-up companies with innovative quality advancements in menstrual products. After about 4 months of comparing different products, we decided to prioritize coverage on campus then update quality products. The current products would be placed in all female and gender neutral bathrooms under the consideration that the team had pre-ordered products of higher quality which would become available in the Spring of 2024.
Phase III: Installation
During the Wintersession and Spring of 2023, teams of hundreds of custodial staff and building managers worked on this project to install menstrual product dispensers in over 817 bathrooms across campus. The scope of this project includes all residential houses, academic/administrative buildings, and athletic facilities. Since the project started, Harvard Libraries have also committed to installing menstrual product dispensers in all female and gender-neutral bathrooms across campus.
Moving forward, we will continue to push for innovation in commercial menstrual products and updating our dispensers with quality products as we receive them. We would love to hear from you on your feedback, thoughts, and suggestions on the project!
Please fill out the form located at the top right hand corner of this page with any general feedback, thoughts, and inquiries about the project.
Stay tuned for more conversations with Harvard leadership on period security as a priority here at Harvard.
Read more about the project in the 2023 Menstrual Equity Impact Report linked here: TBD