On most days, the concrete plaza outside Wescoe Hall is a gauntlet of clipboard-wielding recruiters, sorority fundraisers and off-campus landlords. Students hurry across it between lectures, eyes fixed forward, dodging the next person who wants thirty seconds of their time. On October 6, one of those tables will be offering something a little different: the chance to build your own period emergency kit, free of charge, from a spread of menstrual cups, reusable pads, period underwear, single-use pads and tampons.
The event runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Wescoe Beach, the stretch of paved ground on Jayhawk Boulevard that students nicknamed for its sandless, sun-baked concrete. It is a drop-in affair, open to anyone, with no ticket and no capacity limit. The only formal note on the listing is a line about accommodations, directing inquiries to Jenny McKee, the associate director of KU's Health Education Resource Office.
The kits are the public face of the PERIOD Project, a student-led initiative run alongside Student Affairs that stocks free menstrual products in restrooms across the Lawrence campus. The project's own framing is blunt about why it exists. Citing a 2013 national survey commissioned by Free The Tampons, KU's Health Education Resource Office notes that 86 percent of menstruating people between 18 and 54 have started a period unexpectedly in public without the supplies they needed. The ways they coped, according to that survey, were rarely dignified: 79 percent improvised a pad or tampon out of toilet paper or something else, 62 percent left to buy supplies immediately, 53 percent asked another person, and 34 percent went home. The project's stated goal is to remove the possibility that menstruation interrupts a student's ability to learn, work or simply get through the day.
The program traces back to 2019, when the first round of free period products went into campus bathrooms. McKee has said the initiative has drawn positive feedback since that pilot. What began as a modest experiment has since grown into a standing inventory spread across libraries, classroom buildings, unions and recreation centers, with supplies in women's restrooms and single-use restrooms from Anschutz Library to the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center. In June, the project hung window clings on bathroom mirrors regardless of gender, each bearing a QR code linking to a map of every location where free pads and tampons are stocked.
That map has since become a point of contention. In the fall, the project removed menstrual products from men's restrooms, and some buildings took down the mirror clings in those rooms. The change came after Kansas enacted a law that, among other provisions, restricts people from using public restrooms that do not match their sex assigned at birth. A KU Law lecturer, Mark Johnson, told the student newspaper that placing period products in men's restrooms is not prohibited under the law, calling the project's shift an unintended consequence of the bill. A university spokesperson denied any link between the law and the change. McKee's explanation was more measured: "This fall as the school year began, we evaluated the project — as is common with many campus programs — and made adjustments." Products remain available in women's and single-use restrooms.
The timing of the October event is not accidental. Period Action Day is observed on the second Saturday of October each year, a global day of advocacy organized by PERIOD., the youth-powered nonprofit founded in 2014 by Nadya Okamoto. The observance began in 2019 as National Period Day, when organizers staged rallies in all fifty states to draw attention to period poverty. It has since grown into an international push for menstrual equity, pairing service work like product drives with legislative advocacy. PERIOD.'s State of the Period study found that one in four students and one in three adults have struggled to afford period products, and that 45 percent of teenagers reported being affected by negative views of menstruation.
KU's observance lands on a Monday rather than the customary Saturday, but the spirit is the same. The choice of Wescoe Beach as a venue carries its own logic. The plaza sits across from Strong Hall and beside Budig Hall, one of the largest lecture halls on campus, which makes it the busiest pedestrian crossroads at KU and a long-standing site for protests, tabling and public speech. It is, in other words, exactly where a table about a subject people tend to avoid eye contact over can reach the most people.
For students who stop by, the practical takeaway is a kit they assemble themselves — a small stockpile of supplies to keep in a backpack or a locker for the day a period arrives unannounced. The larger point, organizers suggest, is that no one should have to MacGyver their way through a Tuesday morning. The products are free, the table is open, and the only requirement is showing up between 11 and 1.