Lafayette for Reproductive Autonomy, Justice and Empowerment (L-RAJE) is working with Engineers Without Borders to make the menstrual product dispensers more accessible. This is the latest initiative in the second phase of L-RAJE’s Menstrual Equity Project.
L-RAJE co-presidents Charlotte Vierling ‘24 and Sophie Himmel ‘24 have been exploring options to make the project more accommodating to students since its inception. Launched in 2022, the project aims to provide free and accessible menstrual products for students around campus.
“We came up with the idea that an engineered or automated solution might make things a little bit easier,” Vierling said. “We got put in touch with Engineers Without Borders … We’ve been meeting semi-regularly in order to talk about the delivery of products and where the engineering solution can come in.”
The project’s initial goal was to automate the product refill in the dispensers by making them WiFi-enabled. However, the IT Department has had difficulties figuring out a way to connect the sensors on each dispenser to WiFi.
“In talks with IT, we came to the conclusion that this solution might not be the best,” Charlie Foster ‘24, the president of Engineers Without Borders, wrote in an email. “Instead we met with L-RAJE and collectively came to the conclusion that the main problem is that people don’t know which bathrooms have dispensers and that they aren’t refilled regularly enough.”
The project has now shifted to focus on a QR code system to monitor dispenser quantities, and Vierling said that L-RAJE is in the process of assembling a task force to check dispensers and fill out the code. Led by Foster, Engineers Without Borders has a team of roughly seven people working on the project.
Moving forward, L-RAJE and Engineers Without Borders will continue to be in conversation with the IT department on how best to carry out their objectives.
“We will be brainstorming different ideas to combat the real problem we are trying to solve,” Foster wrote. “We were given this project with a clear deliverable but that deliverable turned out to not necessarily be the correct way forward. We are putting our engineering minds to work to compose a well-rounded solution that can be implemented fast and be efficient in nature.”
