Students may have the opportunity to publicly state their collective opinions on several Duke issues-including the morning-after pill-vis a vis a Nov. 6 referendum issued by Duke Student Government.
"We want to gauge student interest on a myriad of issues facing the Duke community while we're at a good crossroads to do so," said junior Jimmy Carter, DSG chief of staff.
He said that some issues might include online billing, design ideas for Perkins Library and Bryan Center renovations.
Legislators will vote on potential referendum topics at their Oct. 18 meeting.
"[We want] to get valuable feedback from the student body concerning certain issues and tie into the voting spirit of the national elections as an ideal time to get that kind of feedback," said junior Drew Ensign, chair of the Student Organizations Finance Committee.
Junior Steve Hong, president of Duke Students for Life, said he hopes to see a question about the morning-after pill on the ballot and campaigned last weekend to obtain signatures on a petition for the cause.
He proposed that the question "Should all Duke undergraduate students be required to pay for the Morning-After Pill out of the mandatory Student Health Fee?" be included on the ballot.
At the time he and others campaigned, Hong thought that the mandatory student health fee covered prescriptions for the morning-after pill. However, starting this year, students must pay for the pill, which costs $7.79. Hong explained, though, that when he talked to a staff member at the East Campus Wellness Clinic, she informed him that the pill was free.
"Even after the policy was changed in August, it doesn't seem there was much effort to educate anyone about the change if even the Student Health staff are not aware of it," Hong wrote in an e-mail.
"I still feel this is an important issue in that the policy has been the same for so many years and that it does seem there is a possibility for it to revert to the old policy," Hong said.
Hong said he hopes the 922 signatures he submitted Monday to Ensign will convince the legislature that the question should be on the ballot. Carter said the proposal and events surrounding it will be debated in the legislature.
"We don't want to ask questions that aren't true of the student body," Carter said. "The signatures were placed under a false pretense.... If [the pill is not subsidized], I think more so than anything, DSG needs to focus on educating the student body and letting them know their student health fee is not going to pay for the morning-after pill."
Women's rights advocates have argued that the question is biased.
"I've read the question and I find it very skewed to anti-choice opinion. I don't think it would be a fair question to ask...," said senior Carrie Johnson, coordinator of Students for Choice. "This question obscures the importance of providing reproductive health services and implies that the morning-after pill is not something worthy of universal access to women on this campus." Johnson is also a DSG Cabinet member.
Donna Lisker, director of the Women's Center, said that emergency contraception should remain a private matter between a woman and her doctor.
"I don't think we should be in the business of saying this drug is better than that drug," Lisker said. "I doubt [Hong] would like it very much if we said Student Health isn't going to cover your antibiotic because we don't like it or the way it acts in your body."
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