Lack of menstrual products in school is a barrier to education in Idaho. Let’s fix it | Opinion

Menstrual products

My name is Trinity Compton. I am 17 years old, the ASB president of Boise High and a menstruator. For years our student council has been fundraising for free menstrual products to be readily available for our students. And although I am proud to be learning in a school that has been providing accessible products for all, the reality of it is that Boise High is one of few in Idaho to work this way.

One in four students has trouble accessing menstrual products when on their period and one in five students missed class time due to this. We will not be alienated or stigmatized. Menstruation is a natural bodily function. If soap and toilet paper can be worked into your budget, so can menstrual products. The lack of free products in schools of Idaho is a barrier to our education.

I ask the politicians of Idaho if you care about the people you represent and our education, or if you care more about the capital letter next to your name. This is not about a D or R, this is the bare minimum, invest in our future, and do your job.

Trinity Compton, Garden City

‘Woke’

Having lived in Florida for the past 10 years, I have witnessed the meaning of “woke” be butchered by Republicans in many different ways. I am sure Florida’s state legislature and governor would agree with Idaho’s state legislature that providing publicly funded, free menstrual products in schools is “too woke.” But I grew up in Idaho and attended North Junior High and Boise and Borah High Schools in the ’60s. All those schools had Kotex/Tampax dispensers in their girls’ bathrooms. The cost was a nickel. Feminine products were accessible and almost free. We needed those dispensers then as students need them now. Maybe a return to the 1960s practice could be a compromise...charge a nickel. Back in the day, most students had change in their pockets but not always nickels, and girls usually asked girls for that nickel. As a recently retired teacher who taught in Nevada, DOD schools and Florida, I inform you that modern-day female students will also ask male students for that nickel without either gender thinking too much about it, you know, because they are “woke.”

Karlua Giguere, Coral Springs

Letters to the editor

I have just read a long series of letters to the editor of the Idaho Statesman, republished via the Yahoo News online site. As a retired Canadian who has lived and worked across the world for the last 50 years and now lives in the UK and Thailand, I have to compliment your readers on their intelligence, integrity and humanity, as evidenced by letters revealing the malign mindset and anti-constitutional intent of “Christo-fascists, book bans, guns-of-war supporters and those against gender-affirming care. Clearly, my perception of Idaho as wildly beautiful, but foolishly conservative and right wing was half-wrong! I’m gratified and impressed.

David Easton, Shrewsbury, UK

Firing squad

Wow, my gosh, wow, Governor Little signed the legislation authorizing a firing squad for action in death penalty cases. Our Attorney General Raul Labrador is ecstatic with glee. He stated that the firing squad is a good method of executing criminals who are guilty of heinous deeds. He stated that the executee only suffers maybe 10 seconds of intense pain and then nothing. How he knows this is not stated, what could it be? But now (a drum roll please and appropriate fireworks), welcome the guillotine. What could go wrong, just like the firing squad. Stay tuned for more exciting news regarding best methods of doing the bad folks.

Janette McFarland, Fruitland

Benign guidance

I miss my people. There are valid points regarding the broad alienation of old, rural, so-called conservatives now embracing today’s Republican tyranny.

Raised by this demographic, little-education agrarians whose struggles persist in an urban and gentrifying America, some of these resentments touch a tender place.

An upbringing among a sincerely Christian milieu: shelter the poor, heal the sick, and gather the children; conveys a genuine commitment to those in true need. Tax the wealthy and profitable corporations for the means to aid those whose helpless origins and futile efforts fail to engender a secure and dignified existence. However, a tax credit per child, and up to $400K households? Student loan forgiveness for annual incomes of $125K? The Covid handout pinata? Please.

If Democrats are eroding lifelong loyalties such as mine, degradation will continue until we become as stingy, cruel, and short-sighted as the fascist cultures the fire-eaters cite when asked to mask or vax, judiciously oversee gun practices and leave health care to those who know best.

Are we too lazy, stubborn and ignorant for benign guidance? Rational and discerning regulation may impose upper limits on grand wealth and unbridled power, while enhancing probabilities for many good folks from humble origins.

Linden Bates, Boise

Zone code rewrite

The modern zoning code rewrite underway is essential for Boise to improve housing access and maintain its quality of life. It proposes more dense zoning in the urban core, where new housing stock can be constructed closer to public infrastructure while reducing traffic demands. It proposes to fill the “missing middle” of medium density housing (e.g. attached townhomes), which Boise sorely lacks and which will promote more housing ownership opportunities. It includes inclusionary zoning provisions, which dictate income affordability requirements for developers seeking to provide the greater housing densities offered in the new code. It encourages mixed-used environments, which will locate small-scale retail services closer to housing. This will reduce long-term traffic demands and enliven neighborhoods.

Without these changes, housing costs will skyrocket over the long term, and traffic and congestion will increase as more housing development is pushed further afield. Public infrastructure like roads and utilities will be spread across a greater footprint, which will increase the costs to service and maintain it over the long term. We have the benefit of having observed this in Phoenix, Dallas and other sprawling cities where you spend the bulk of your life in a car.

We should all support this so that our children and grandchildren can access housing in Boise.

Casey Lynch, Boise, CEO, Roundhouse