Plan B on Campus/ in the World: Accessibility Rises

Laurel Prince

Target Publication: The Index

Word Count: 1011

On a Sunday morning during my first year at K, I walked 20 minutes with a friend to Walgreens, where she shelled out almost $50 for Plan B.

Two years ago, access to Emergency Contraception (EC) as a K College student was a very different story. Since then, EC has been brought into the national spotlight. On June 5^th of this year, a federal appeals court ruled that all EC be sold without prescriptions to women of all ages. On K’s campus, members of S3A, Sexual Safety and Support Alliance have allowed EC to become highly accessible, providing the drug for $15 dollars, any day of the week, at any time.

Emergency Contraception aka the Morning-after Pill, also referred to by the brand name Plan B can be used to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex: sex without birth control or sex where a birth control method failed.

The drug is used with relative frequency, in May of this year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported, “About 11 percent of sexually active women, or 5.8 million, used the pill between 2006 and 2010.”

Rachel Evans, a junior at K and one of the original members of S3A guided me through the story of Plan B on K’s campus. Evans quickly explained that the Campus Health Center, where the pill has always been offered for $15, doesn’t often work for students. She told me, “It’s a problem because they’re only open until 4 or 5 every day, and not on the weekends.”

S3A started selling the EC Next Choice at the beginning of the spring quarter, in March, amongst ongoing court cases regarding access to the drug. The group, whose missions include creating space for sexual assault survivors and providing support if students decide to pursue their attackers in the legal system, was asked by the Health Center and the Peer Health Advocates (PHA) to help raise accessibility to EC on campus.

Since S3A began selling EC, sales have increased by more than 50%. In spring quarter of 2012, 11 packs were sold. During spring quarter a year later, 28 packs were sold. Jennifer Combes, the Office Coordinator of the Health Center wrote in an email, “We didn’t track if a student received it from the student health center or one of the student groups, however I think the numbers indicate the effectiveness of student’s having access.”

Plan B One Step, and the generic version Next Choice, the leading Emergency Contraception options, are 89% effective if taken within the first 72 hours, and can remain effective for 5 days after sex, according to Planned Parenthood.

The crux of the problem of distributing Plan B on college campuses is simple: the drug is most effective in the hours after unprotected sex, oftentimes during the weekends or in the early morning hours when campus health centers are not open.

Evans explains how Plan B works on this campus: members of S3A, with an online and campus-wide presence, can opt in to carrying the pill, and hold one at a time. If a student contacts a member to receive the drug, they can pay cash or sign a form with options to pay with card in the Health Center of have the charge placed on their student account as “Health Center Bill.” The S3A member then brings the money or confirmation of payment to the Health Center to receive a new box. This means that each member can only distribute to one person during non-business hours, a possible concern. Evans cites selling 3 pills this quarter, and says almost every member has sold at least one pill.

The concerns regarding Plan B nationally, however, are not so simple. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Obama Administration and pro-life and pro-choice groups have been debating on the drug for months. Issues regarding the perception of EC as an abortion pill, age and prescription limits on the drug, and accessibility on University campuses have riddled these debates.

When I asked Evans about one of the major concerns surrounding EC, its perception as an abortion pill, she explained frankly that, “People still have this ridiculous conception that Plan B is an abortion pill, which if you’re pregnant, Plan B is not going to do anything.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health confirms Evan’s reasoning that that EC is not an abortion pill, nor does it have any lasting health impacts. They write on their website, “Emergency contraception works before pregnancy begins. It will not work if a woman is already pregnant.”

Judge Edward Korman, who made the initial order to the FDA in April to distribute Plan B over-the-counter to women of all ages said, “These emergency contraceptives would be among the safest drugs sold over the counter.”

Shippensburg University, located in a small central Pennsylvanian town, gained national attention in January for an EC vending machine, which was eventually allowed by the FDA. At Shippensburg, questions were raised over the availability of the drug to non-University students or students under the previous FDA requirement of 17-years of age. The school policy became a debacle, ending in a requirement for students swipe their student ID before purchase, confirming both age and University enrollment.

Other campuses nationwide have the pill available through Health Centers, although the method of students selling the drug is rare. Several schools, including Harvard, allow women to receive the drug free of charge at campus health centers.

S3A members will sell to men and women, and Evans explained that they don’t keep track of names, just number of pills sold.

“We don’t tell even each other the names of the people. That’s something we debated about for a while, is it important to keep track if someone doing this every weekend? We decided that that’s everybody’s personal choice, there are no health problems associated with it. You can take it every weekend and that’s fine. People can take it every weekend if they want, it’s probably not the least expensive way to do that,” says Evans.

Writing Process

http://jezebel.com/fda-you-can-buy-plan-b-over-the-counter-but-you-must-486203419

I included this link right off the bat to give everyone a sense of Jezebel, which is a Feminist-type blog, as well as give an example of another piece they've written about Plan B.

Alright, writing this piece. I've been feeling relatively confident thus far, easily conducting my first two interviews and enjoying the writing style that my target publication has allowed me. Although I'm sure I need plenty of feedback on how to make myself more witty, cool, whatever (I'll get to that later), I liked the sense of freedom and challenge that writing a slightly more non-traditional story involved. 

I want to note in regards to content, that what I am expecting will truly shape this piece is a planning meeting between S3A and students in regards to future endeavors and the possibility of a Sexual Assualt Support Group. This meeting occurs on Wednesday (exactly before our class workshop). With that being said, I am curious to each of your opinions on what is key in this piece. I was hoping to weave together several aspects of S3A's work, creating scenes and telling their story, but I'm still working this out, and the meeting seems crucial. What has popped out thus far? 

Additionally, I am curious as to the reactions to my own voice in the piece? Jezebel typically uses sassy/ funny/ sarcastic language, but doesn't always necessarily use the "I", which thus far I have included in my piece. I'm thinking this is going to become more key as the scene idea develops, but those are my main areas that I'm hoping for feedback.

See you in class!

This School has got your back: Plan B and Sexual Assault Support

Target Publication: Jezebel

Word Count: 805 (without event)

The US is obsessed with Plan B, Abortion and other such things right now (aka, as always) and the current debates have sparked us all. At one little school in the homey Midwest, Kalamazoo College, is pushing the trend with a new on-campus group: S3A. Which stands for Sexual Safety and Support Alliance, is avoiding all the ridiculous drugstore prices and has managed to get real live students to sell Plan B for 15 bucks!

Let me state that I indeed, attend the college, called “K” by its student, and despite not having bought Plan B myself, I did make a stressful trek with a friend in my first-year to get the pill. This is rockin’ for college students. Not just at Kalamazoo, but for every student that ever had to wasted dollars and time getting their hands on this pill.

As part of my investigation, this reporter called the nearest drugstore to K College- a full 18 minutes walk away- and then suffered through 11 minutes phone call to discover the pill costs 47 dollars and some change. A grand 32 dollars more than the campus group can sell it for.  

The group started selling the emergency contraception at the beginning of the spring trimester, in March, amongst the ongoing court cases regarding the FDA. Judge Edward Korman most recently ruled to have the drug carried on drugstore shelves to all women over the age of 15, which will stay in effect until the current appeal by the Justice Department is ruled upon.

Unlike other campuses like Shippensburg University, which gained national attention for a Plan B vending machine, K avoided many troubles by allowing students to sell the pill. At Shippensburg, questions were raised over the availability of the drug to non-University students or students under the previous FDA requirement of 17-years of age. The school now makes students swipe their student ID before purchase, and the price is still much higher than at K College, 25 dollars.

Rachel Evans, a Junior at K and one of the first members of S3A told me the campus Health Center, who has always offered the pill for that price, said: “It’s a problem because they’re only open until 4 or 5 every day, and not on the weekends.” (And, duh, on most college campuses, when do students have time for sex other than the weekends?)

S3A created after administrators decided the campus needed space for sexual assault survivors. Evans explains she and her 8 co-workers aim to: “Be an open ear for people and if people do want to do something about [sexual assault], like pursue it in the legal system or at school, we can help them with that.”

Morgan Mahdavi, another Junior at the school, is involved with a furthering of S3A’s mission, is hoping to capitalize on the schools open-mindedness. [Insert events of Wed’s meeting on a Sexual Assault support group planning meeting plus interview with Morgan-already conducted].

Wait, can we come back to that this campus is in the Mid-West? K College is only a couple hours south of “A baby dies every 10 seconds” and other overt anti-abortion and pro-life campaigners. As Evans, who is from Ann Arbor sums up: “This is a somewhat conservative side of the state at least, and I don’t know how comfortable people would be going to the drugstore.” Yet, for some strange and unknown reason, the students and some members of the administration for this kind of cutting edge discussion to occur on campus.

“These issues are coming to the forefront…it’s becoming something that a lot of people on campus are very comfortable talking about and able to discuss. It amazes me,” Mahdavi said, sitting in Biggby Coffee, the coffee joint hidden in a corner of K Colleges Library.

Even men, who are often excluded from discussions or understanding of sexual assault or are somehow perceived as outsiders in this discussion, are getting in the loop at K. During Take Back the Night (which every reader should know about), the yearly event where women speak up about sexual assault and march the streets to reclaim spaces typically seen as unsafe for women, a men’s group on the campus promoted an event to help men understand their role in the fight against sexual assault.

Mahdavi, who spoke about her own experiences with sexual assault at K’s Take Back the Night event on May 13^th, said: “Men here are coming into consciousness and are able to discuss these things. Creating a place where this is normal and support is normal.”

We should all wish that our schools have a Plan B for us, because we’re learning, and sometimes we mess up. Oh wait, my school already does. 

Something to Read

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

I read this piece a month back after my mom emailed it to me, and would like to share it with the class. An excerpt from Michael Moss's most recent book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us," the piece explores the research and marketing behind junk food, specifically how to get consumers to eat more, crave more, and buy more. For me, this piece combined a personal interest: health and food to create a strong, clearly researched piece which seems to stand on it's own, despite being part of a larger story.

The piece incorporates several layers of reporting: Moss tells his own narrative about his experiences and relationship with the CEO's and scientists he interviews, tells their stories, explains events attended, research projects he reviewed, and marketing campaigns he evaluated. In class, I'd be interested in talking about the level of research and time commitment needed to create a book/ piece of this sort, and our opinions of narrative books (like Gail's) and this one, and how this fits into our understanding of journalism.

Enjoy, see you all in class.

360 degrees of Consignment

 “That is gorgeous. It’ll go,” Amy says, watching a young girl shimmy into a full-length white prom dress. The bodice is shimmery, the bottom pushing out with fluff, the girl grinning.

Amy Baird is the owner of 360°, a consignment shop in Kalamazoo. She wears sparkling earrings, brown hair falling straight just past her shoulders, a nude and white lace shirt over dark cuffed jeans, sitting on a plump chair in the back of her shop. 360°, which dominates much of Kalamazoo’s consignment market, sells to both women and men. Consignment stores work off a seller- buyer relationship, at 360° a seller gets fifty percent of the final price and the business gets fifty percent, an even split for both.

360°, which is located in the Westwood Plaza on West Main, throws together styles for women and men, the stores display window stacked with the latest styles. Today, it’s there’s a striped full length dresses, a crisp white blazer paired with a huge necklace. Inside the store, shelves are carefully lined with colorful beaded heels, nude flats, Frye boots, display women continue to model the styles Baird finds each day. Baird remembers a woman who once came in, bought everything from the mannequins, and while Baird was redressing them, she left, and then came back in to buy the newly displayed outfits.

“We made rent our first month,” Baird claims proudly about the store, which opened in 2000. “Not anything more.” For a small business owner, breaking even in the first couple months is crucial. This was an immediate indicator of success for Baird, who says her father put aside money for rent at the beginning, which she never needed to ask for.

Baird is the sole owner, her husband originally pushed the idea for the store hard, after only one year of marriage. She studied Apparel, Merchandising and Textiles at the University of Kentucky, then moved into the corporate world, which was not for her: “Well, I had a boss, which I didn’t like. There was no real personal communication with people,” she says. 360° grew quickly at the beginning, since it’s opening they now have over 14,000 names in the computer, both sellers and buyers. “I am the buyer and I am the merchandiser. I am everything in this job,” she says.

She describes her college-self as a shopaholic. “I did everything everybody else did. I spent a lot of money on clothes,” she admits. After moving west to Denver, she came back to her hometown of Kalamazoo to help run Second Childhood, a consignment shop for kids: “I was helping her run that small business at the age of 23. I had all the freedom in the world,” Baird explained.

She opened 360° soon after that. She remembers her husband saying: “We have no money, we have nothing. That’s the perfect time to start it, we have nothing to lose.” The plaza where 360° is located was her ideal location, near the big colleges and in an area people frequented for shopping. Baird says she knew she wanted to own the store solo, describing her independence and desire for creative control: “I know how I want things done. I was afraid if I did it with somebody else, it would get in the way. I didn’t know what it would do to a friendship.”

Baird does work alongside two other women: Katie, who works two days a week, and Kristen Cooley, who has been with the store for three and a half years. Cooley laughs easily, a new mom to eight-month-old Bryson, and is wearing skinny Forever 21 jeans, a pink and white striped oversized t-shirt, tan pumps, and a turquoise necklace, bubbles of color layered upon each other. She and Amy sort through a handful of clothes thrown across the white counter. Fifteen seconds later, they’ve successfully picked out half the items to sell: a couple frilly summer tops, a dress, and begin the process of labeling, entering into the computer, pricing and then organizing each item.

Baird sees each and every item that comes in. Today, she has four racks of clothes to sort through, and unprecedented number of items came in on Saturday. She holds up shirt and says: “Shirt, yellow, teal, white pullover tunic, Trina Turk, Banana Republic,” and then picks the price: $22.95, explaining: “There are a couple things I look for. The brand, how new it is, you know, how current, even if it didn’t have a tag, and how well I think it’ll sell.”

Cooley describes Baird’s relationship with the store frankly: “People ask for her by name, people call it Amy’s store.”  Cooley works the business hours of the store, 10 to 6, and contrasts her own relationship to the store with Baird’s: “For her, she is a bigger part of it; it’s always on her mind, the anxiety. If a customer has a problem, it’s her business.” She is quick to note the influence the store has on Baird’s family life: “Her kids are getting older, and they’re doing things. I don’t want to step between there, because I know she wants to be a huge part of the business, but I’d be there anytime she wants to go to her daughters dance recital.”

Baird herself describes being a mom and business owner frankly: “It’s awful, it’s really hard. It’s very stressful to be a woman, who’s a business owner, the breadwinner, and a mother. You wear every hat,” she says. Her kids say, “Look Mommy’s famous” when they go out and people recognize her. She remembers when the CEO of Yahoo was critiqued for taking two weeks off after pregnancy, and recounts taking one week off, explaining that’s what a single business owner does. Her kids are 10 and 6 and her husband works part time at FedEx, mostly for the benefits. Baird laughs at the thought of having hobbies, hoping that when her kids get older she’ll have time to do things for herself again. “I don’t know if I’ll hand this business down to my daughter, because it’s so stressful,” she says.

Baird says the businesswoman aspect of her job isn’t the hardest one, when the economy dipped in 2007, 360° felt the impacts. She recounts: “People were like ‘God your business must be great because it’s used clothing’ and I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ Because if nobody’s buying anything new, I’m not getting anything in, and then I have nothing. It’s a vicious circle.” Plato’s Closet, a nationwide chain specializing in clothes for “teen and twenty something guys and girls”, opened across town in 2007, forcing a contest in the Kalamazoo consignment scene for the first time in Amy’s ownership of 360°.  “I had anxiety every single day. I’d been coasting along for 7 years, and all of a sudden I had competition,” Baird recalls. Plato’s Closet, she says, dominated the tween market, and she shifted to a slightly older focus group, 22-45. 360° got a better selection, carrying slightly more upscale brands like Banana Republic and JCrew.

One of the biggest challenges these days, Baird says, is the ability of customers to post bad experiences online: “You have a bad experience at a small business, people take it to heart, you know, it really affects your sales. I don’t think a lot of people think about that. It’s really hard to be a small business in this day, because most people will go where the best deal is. I have lots of loyal customers, but even people you thought were loyal are not. And it’s hard to not take it personally.” Being engrained in the community is difficult as well, “You gotta go and try to make everybody happy, and it’s stressful. And we live in the community. The community of 360° does have it benefits though, and a 13-year relationship with customers is a long time. “That’s 13 years they’ve been coming. I’ve seen them get married. They change their name and I forget their new name,” she says.

Baird is now sorting through a new rack of clothes, when a mother and daughter come in, looking for a full-length nude dress, a young bridesmaids dress, in a children size. 360° doesn’t carry children’s clothes, but Baird, Cooley and a random customer quickly list six or seven other stores they could try, pulling out iPhones and helping the women brainstorm. The customer recommends Rent the Runway, telling about how the girl could get a dress for just a short time and then send it back, renting an outfit for the wedding. Cooley says this is one of the strengths a small business has: “We all have communication, so if a customer has a problem or there’s a unique customer, we kind of all know what’s going on.” The woman and her daughter leave clearly pleased with the visit, despite having purchased nothing.

For the upcoming summer, and the three racks of items still waiting to be sorted, Baird says the store can be unpredictable. On the first sunny days, people are often outside, they don’t come into the store: “they’re on walks, they’re eating outside, they’re exercising,” she explains, then after a couple of nice days, they come to get their new things. She recites her motto for the store: “I’d rather have somebody come in and buy five things at a less expensive price than just one. That way five sellers make profit.” Cooley tops it off, “There must not be a place like this anywhere else. People say, they move to New York, and they send their stuff home, and they move to Chicago, and they still send their stuff here.”

Word Count: 1612

Target: The Kalamazoo Gazette

The Events of October

My impressions of The Events of October were highly impacted by my constant nausea while reading the book. I was, to say the least, very impacted by this story, and put the book down several times, especially at the parts focusing on the IM's and the murder scene. With that aside, I do have some critiques and questions about the book.

I was interested in the time line of this story, which is something that I'd hope to discuss with Gail this evening. At what point was it clear to her that an in-depth book was the appropriate medium for this story? Did she do primarily research or was the information presented something she had kept or had easy access to? I am curious about the process of this writing, and how transition from different styles of writing comes to a writer?

Secondly, the use of her own character was both positive and negative in my opinion. I perhaps expected her to be too much of the story, since we open with her experience, but this was incorrect. She doesn't weave herself back into the piece until much later, after describing in detail some of the relationships and stories of both Maggie and Neenef. I was confused by this slightly, perhaps I just had the wrong impression, but this threw me off, and almost made me question why she included the "I" character. I know I sort of asked this last week, but I'm still struggling (especially after reading many profiles, which seem to be split between using the "I" character and not) at how one makes this decision. Gail's explanation here would definitely be good insight, and I hope to bring that up tonight.

Overall, the reading experience was not a pleasant one due perhaps to my senstivity and this topic, but I did enjoy the structure, the leading through the experience, and am excited to talk about some of the complexities of both the event and the process of writing a story about it.

Revision

Words: 1156

Target Publication: The Kalamazoo Gazette

Title: 360 degrees of Consignment

“That is gorgeous. It’ll go,” Amy says, watching a young girl shimmy into a full-length white prom dress. The bodice is shimmery, the bottom pushing out with fluff, the girl grinning.

Amy Baird is the owner of 360°, a consignment shop in Kalamazoo. She wears sparkling earrings, brown hair falling straight just past her shoulders, a nude and white lace shirt over dark cuffed jeans, sitting on a plump chair in the back of her shop. 360°, which dominates much of Kalamazoo’s consignment market, sells to both women and men. Consignment stores work off a seller- buyer relationship, at 360° a seller gets fifty percent of the final price and the business gets fifty percent, an even split for both.

“We made rent our first month,” she smiles proudly about the store, which opened in 2000. “Not anything more.” For a small business owner, breaking even in the first couple months is crucial. This was an immediate indicator of success for Amy, who says her father put aside money for rent at the beginning, which she proudly recounts that she never needed to ask for.

Baird is the sole owner, her husband originally pushed the idea for the store hard, after only one year of marriage. She studied Apparel, Merchandising and Textiles at the University of Kentucky, then moved into the corporate world, which was not for her: “Well, I had a boss, which I didn’t like. There was no real personal communication with people,” she says. 360° grew quickly at the beginning, since it’s opening they now have over 14,000 names in the computer, both sellers and buyers. “I am the buyer and I am the merchandiser. I am everything in this job,” she says.

She describes her college-self as a shopaholic. “I did everything everybody else did. I spent a lot of money on clothes,” she admits. After moving west to Denver, she came back to her hometown of Kalamazoo to help run Second Childhood, another consignment shop for kids: “I was helping her run that small business at the age of 23. I had all the freedom in the world,” Baird explained.

She opened 360° soon after that. She remembers her husband saying: “We have no money, we have nothing. That’s the perfect time to start it, we have nothing to lose.” The plaza where 360° is located was her ideal location, near the big colleges and in an area people frequented for shopping. Baird says she knew she wanted to own the store solo, describing her independence and desire for creative control: “I know how I want things done. I was afraid if I did it with somebody else, it would get in the way. I didn’t know what it would do to a friendship.”

Baird does work alongside two other women Katie, who works two days a week, and Kristen Cooley, who has been with the store for three and a half years. Cooley laughs easily, a new mom to eight-month-old Bryson, and is wearing skinny Forever 21 jeans, a pink and white striped oversized t-shirt, tan pumps, and a turquoise necklace, bubbles of color layered upon each other. She and Amy sort through a handful of clothes thrown across the white counter. Fifteen seconds later, they’ve successfully picked out half the items to sell: a couple frilly summer tops, a dress, and begin the process of labeling, entering into the computer, pricing and then organizing each item.

Baird sees each and every item that comes in. Today, she has four racks of clothes to sort through, and unprecedented number of items came in on Saturday. She holds up shirt and says: “Shirt, yellow, teal, white pullover tunic, Trina Turk, Banana Republic,” and then picks the price: $22.95, explaining: “There are a couple things I look for. The brand, how new it is, you know, how current, even if it didn’t have a tag, and how well I think it’ll sell.”

Cooley describes Baird’s relationship with the store frankly: “People ask for her by name, people call it Amy’s store.”  Cooley works the business hours of the store, 10 to 6, and contrasts her own relationship to the store with Baird’s: “For her, she is a bigger part of it; it’s always on her mind, the anxiety. If a customer has a problem, it’s her business.” She is quick to note the influence the store has on Baird’s family life: “Her kids are getting older, and they’re doing things. I don’t want to step between there, because I know she wants to be a huge part of the business, but I’d be there anytime she wants to go to her daughters dance recital.”

Baird herself describes being a mom and business owner frankly: “It’s awful, it’s really hard. It’s very stressful to be a woman, who’s a business owner, the breadwinner, and a mother. You wear every hat,” she says. Her kids say “Look Mommy’s famous” when they go out and people recognize her. She remembers when the CEO of Yahoo was critiqued for taking two weeks off after pregnancy, and recounts taking one week off, explaining that’s what a single business owner does. Her kids are 10 and 6 and her husband works part time at FedEx, mostly for the benefits. Baird laughs at the thought of having hobbies, hoping that when her kids get older she’ll have time to do things for herself again. “I don’t know if I’ll hand this business down to my daughter, because it’s so stressful,” she says.

Baird says the businesswoman aspect of her job isn’t the hardest one, when the economy dipped in 2007, 360° felt the impacts. She recounts: “People were like ‘God your business must be great because it’s used clothing’ and I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ Because if nobody’s buying anything new, I’m not getting anything in, and then I have nothing. It’s a vicious circle.” Plato’s Closet, a nationwide chain specializing in clothes for “teen and twenty something guys and girls”, opened across town in 2007, forcing a contest in the Kalamazoo consignment scene for the first time in Amy’s ownership of 360°. 

“I had anxiety every single day. I’d been coasting along for 7 years, and all of a sudden I had competition,” Baird recalls. Plato’s Closet, she says, dominated the tween market, and she shifted to a slightly older focus group, 22-45. 360° got a better selection, carrying slightly more upscale brands like Banana Republic and JCrew. One of the biggest challenges these days, Baird says, is the ability of customers to post bad experiences online: “You have a bad experience at a small business, people take it to heart, you know, it really affects your sales. I don’t think a lot of people think about that. It’s really hard to be a small business in this day, because most people will go where the best deal is. I have lots of loyal customers, but even people you thought were loyal are not. And it’s hard to not take it personally.” Being engrained in the community is difficult as well, “You gotta go and try to make everybody happy, and it’s stressful. And we live in the community.