If you're menstruating, you can carry a purse. If you're not, you can't. Are you? Students at a New York High School protest new No-Backpack Policy after 14 year old girl was questioned about her menstrual cycle.
A security guard at the
Tri-Valley High School in Sullivan County, NY approached a student and asked her if she was menstruating. The girl was carrying a small purse when the school's security guard called her out of class and said she couldn’t carry that purse unless she was having her period, and then asked her if she was.
But 14 year old Samantha Martin isn’t the only student to make these claims. Several other girls who have also been asked the same question have been called in to speak with school officials.
The school district made the decision to ban all backpacks from being carried in the school's hallways this year, citing safety and security issues as the reason for the new policy.
The questioning from the security guard sparked a protest among the school's students, where girls and boys alike have been adorning themselves with tampons and various other sanitary products, attaching them to their clothing and wearing them as articles of jewelry. Some girls are carrying purses made of tampon boxes.
In the students' combined effort to protest the school's new backpack policy, one student was even arrested for running through the halls of the school naked with a paper bag over his head.
Sullivan County is approximately 80 miles northwest of New York City.
