On Sept. 11, Washburn URGE club held their weekly meeting regarding reproductive justice and its effects on our mental health from 7:30 – 8:30 p.m. at Blair room LLC.

The URGE is a student organization established by the youths for the youths regarding reproductive justice and gender equality which cover a very crucial part of human society that are often neglected and treated as a taboo to speak in public.

The meeting discussed reproductive justice. Parker Whaley, vice-president of the URGE and Ally Irwin, organization advocate, started the meeting and gave the presentation about the meeting.

The start of the meeting was quiet, everyone was involved in colouring different pages given by the urge group. Suddenly, when the topic was about abortion and its law, the audience started to open up. Many of the attendees had mixed reviews about abortion and most of them felt that the facilities regarding abortion are being neglected throughout the region. During the discussion about this topic the room was shocked knowing that the nearest abortion center was in Kansas City. 

The presentation covered other aspects as suicidal episodes, marginalised communities, mental health and lack of health care. The URGE group has prepared different packets of sexual safety and menstrual kits. 

Ben Curtis, inventory manager of URGE, gave more information about his position and services provided by URGE in the Washburn.

“I take care of the inventory that we have, everything that we give out that we get, like donations and stuff that we buy,” Curtis said. “So people can reach out to our instagram and they can ask for contraceptives like Plan B. In some of the restrooms there are things that dispense like pads and tampons, those are both URGE used to do and then the university actually picked it up.”

The urge group has provided a space for talking about who we are to ourselves rather than the society and Washburn has supported them in a lot of ways by providing them funds, a place to conduct meetings within the campus and many more. 

“I feel like the biggest problem we had was just finding a consistent meeting space but when it comes to hosting our events, they’re pretty open about us,” Irwin said. 

A club needs moral support to run for a long duration and a club like URGE who had been on hiatus and started operating again from 2021 needs it even more and Washburn has done a great job regarding this.

“We are very supported by Washburn faculty and staff. We’ve won student organization of the year for the past two years in a row which is like faculty voted on,” Whaley said. “So that truly shows that we are appreciated by the faculty, which is nice to know because we do what some people might think of as like controversy and looked down upon in some ways, but it’s really just about providing, making sure people have access to what they need.”

The urge club holds their next meeting on Thursday Sept. 25 at Blair RM LLC from 7:30 p.m.

Edited by Arohi Rai and Anushma Dahal