About 40 percent of campus facilities do not have feminine disposal bins inside the bathroom stalls, limiting women to leave the stall with their hygiene products and dispose of them publicly.
According to the UF Physical Plant Division, some of the women’s bathrooms in Hough Hall, Florida Gym and Little Hall do not have built-in disposal bins inside the stalls.They just have trash cans outside the stalls.
“They should be everywhere on campus,” said Latisha Warren, a member of the custodial staff for Broward Hall, said of the feminine disposal bins.
Warren, 34, said that not having the sanitary boxes in the restrooms can be embarrassing for women and is unsanitary.
On a note inside a Hough Hall women’s bathroom stall, a student scribbled “please provide us with trash receptacles in the stalls.”
Dorie Josma, 19, said she avoids going into certain bathrooms because of the lack of feminine disposal bins. The food science and human nutrition sophomore said the lack of bins may date back to the history of the school.
“Since UF used to be an all-male school, that might have something to do with it,” Josma said.
About 60 percent of the facilities on campus do have feminine disposal bins, said Derrick M. Bacon, director of the Physical Plant Division.
The Physical Plant does not determine whether facilities should provide bins — it is up to the designers of the buildings, Bacon said.
Building codes do not require UF to offer bins.
“It’s not something that the physical plant has made an active effort to change,” Bacon said.
Although the topic has been brought up to the Physical Plant Division from time to time, Bacon said that for change to occur, there needs to be more emphasis on demand for it.
But Bacon said if his daughters were in the same situation as female students at UF, they should “talk to their administrators and see if a change can be made.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 11/7/2014]
