ASA rejects HAPPY., recommends university funds menstrual products

The Augustana Student Association is asking campus administrators to take over HAPPY.’s role as provider of free menstrual products on campus.

At ASA’s Feb. 25 meeting, senators passed a resolution to support Augustana assuming HAPPY.’s role of stocking pads and tampons in campus bathrooms to ensure annual funding and support for the project.

This decision followed President Anna Stritecky’s recommendation against funding the student group as an initiative.

The resolution stems from this fall, when the senate funded only 60 percent of HAPPY.’s $2,000 request to buy product for campus bathrooms and recent decision not to add the organization to the ASA constitution.

“We want to make this [project] sustainable,” Stritecky said. “We don’t want this to be something that’s just here for a couple years.”

However, Manaal Ali, HAPPY.’s co-founder, said she’s still disappointed the senate couldn’t provide direct initiative funding and chose to hand the project off to administration instead.

“I get that there are technicalities,” Ali said at the ASA meeting, “I just wish that for something of necessary, biological use, there would be something we, as students, could do to make it work.”

If administration chooses not to fund free menstrual products on campus, Stritecky said HAPPY., in the “worst case scenario,” would have to apply for funding every fall through ASA’s community development fund, as it does now.

However, if the administration funds the project, it would be guaranteed longevity. HAPPY. would focus solely on advocacy and education, as the janitorial staff would take over product distribution, Stritecky said.

“We have a really good feeling about [administrative funding], because it is such a need,” Stritecky said. “[ASA’s] behind it, and we think it’s really important for the school to have.”