Long Beach City College needs to step up their game on ensuring that the restrooms are stocked with feminine hygiene products.
Feminine hygiene products are supposed to be in all California public school, college, and university restrooms for gender neutral, men’s, and women’s restrooms.
This is because of the “Menstrual Equity Act of 2021” signed by Governor Gavin Newsom last October, but since the start of this semester there has been a struggle to keep these machines properly stocked.
This school year, LBCC has been lacking at keeping up with supply. So far, most restrooms are found to be empty of one or both of the product items offered.
Since the beginning of fall semester at the Liberal Arts Campus, the restrooms in buildings T, V, P, L, and E have been checked twice a week between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. only to find their dispensers empty every time.
A thorough sweep of LAC in October between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. found that not all buildings even had dispensers. Buildings A and M had no machines in their bathrooms while buildings B, C, and D only had dispensers on the first floor restrooms which were empty.
The Art Department restrooms in building K shares their restrooms with the Performing Arts from Lot D, and have always come up empty as well.
Buildings G and H were closed for construction at the time of checking and the Pacific Coast Campus was not included.
Despite these empty machines, Kyle Padron of the Facilities Department said that the dispensers were stocked each night.
So what is happening? Are people taking more than their fair share?
Yes, it is understandable that people using menstrual cycle products may need more than one product for the day, so it should be okay to take a couple at a time to stock up for the day.
However, it’s hard to believe that the machines are getting filled up everyday, because the spring semester had a surplus everyday. There would usually even be a few products already dispensed at the bottom of the machine.
The associate director of Public Relations and Marketing for LBCC, Stacy Toda, informed the Viking they have installed 75 dispensers throughout both campuses even though the Assembly Bill 367 only requires LBCC to install one dispenser on each campus.
According to Padron, the dispensers only hold 16 maxi-pads and 22 tampons.
With 75 machines able to hold 16 maxi-pads and 22 tampons there should be no problem finding these products, yet there is.
There needs to be a more concerted effort on the part of the school to ensure that these dispensers can actually be utilized.