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Monday 11 March 2019 Issue 1386 Free
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Period poverty protest held at Monument Charlotte Boulton On International women’s day a protest was held at Monument in Newcastle to raise awareness of period poverty and celebrating period positivity. The protest began at 10am on the 8th of March.
“It’s about solidarity, it’s great this is on International Women’s Day…we’re raising awareness in a kind of fun way, about a serious issue”
Karen Ross, Professor in Gender and Media
The Women In 100 group, a volunteer-led group in the city, organised a pop-up choir and demonstration at Monument to highlight the issue of period poverty. With 1 in 10 girls aged 14-21 unable to afford menstrual products, according to a Plan International survey, it is a clear problem in current UK society. The group put a call-out for red pom-poms to be made by volunteers, to become visual representations of period blood; they received hundreds of pom-poms which were hung around Grey’s Monument. The event was attended by members of the university’s Feminist Society, NUSU staff and some university staff. Karen Ross, Professor in Gender and Media, and one of the lead organisers of the event, said: “It’s about solidarity, it’s great this is on International Women’s Day…we’re raising awareness in a kind of fun way, about a serious issue.” Bethany Elen Coyle, a local community
Newcastle University Feminist Society attended the protest Image: Emily Richardson
musician and activist, composed a new song, ‘Period Positivity’, especially for the choir to perform. The room was filled with diverse women, of different ages, races and experiences. Sian Dickie, Newcastle University’s Feminist Society’s Social Media Secretary commented: “The rehearsals were empowering as you felt like you were in a safe space
to get involved, and inspiring to be around so many people to celebrate the day”. At 12pm, the group donned red pom-poms and red material squares to unify the group with the message of period positivity and headed over to Monument. Pom-poms were strung across Monument and onlookers began to watch with a few curious members of
the public approaching the choir to ask what was happening. Bethany led the choir through ‘Bella Mama’, a four-part round song to warm up the singers, before launching into her original ‘Period Positivity’. This featured lyrics discussing how tampon tax is “a capitalists dream designed by the patriarchy” and the overwhelming mes-
sage to raise your voice and stand up for your rights and your communities. NUSU recently showed commitment to tackling period poverty by the success of President Raff Marioni’s motion aiming to provide free menstrual products on campus, but the report has yet to be accepted by the University.
three candidates in the last seven days alone, with only three candidates releasing videos on the NUSU website in the run up to campaigns week. When asked why he thought that there had been such a high level of dropouts for the position Jonny Hall, Education Officer told the Courier: “So there’s a number of problems I think. We’ve faced a lot of problems with international students running for the position
and coming up against visa issues and I think this has put a number of candidates off. I think this is something for the new postgrad to work on to make sure that in the future postgraduate candidates feel that they have that support from the very start of the election process. There has also been candidates who’ve dropped out due to receiving job opportunities and PHD’s.”
Despite the significant amount of dropouts in this role the overall number of candidates running for Full time officer positions is still higher than the year before with 30 students running for different roles. A candidate running a controversial campaign for the role as President has stated in his manifesto: ‘Can we build a wall between Newcastle and Northumbria and make Northumbria pay for it? I will at the very least investigate
this idea’ and claimed he ‘will get a face tattoo that says President.’ In his election video the candidate says “don’t get bogged down in whether or not those things could actually happen, we’ll worry about that later.” Election week begins on the 18th of March and voting opens at noon. Any Newcastle University student is eligible to vote at nusu. co.uk/vote.
Candidate chaos in run up to elections Louise Hall Editor
After having been reported that the Postgraduate Sabbatical officer position had received the most nominations ever for any sabbatical role last week, since voting has closed there has been a significant amount of dropouts for this position. The position has dropped from ten to only
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