In late spring, at the end of Anna Wilson’s first year of college, she was cleaning out her dorm room with her mom. 

As they were packing up the room, her mom opened the closet door and looked down. 

“Anna,” her mom said, “why do you have giant bins of condoms in here?” 

A massive box of 500 condoms: Trojan condoms, ribbed condoms, Trojan Magnums — was pushed to the back of her closet.

“Oh my gosh,” Wilson realized, “I have to get rid of those. What am I going to do?”

Wilson reached out to the then-president of fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Zakir Naqvi, to offer the contraceptives to SAE members over the summer. Naqvi was “stoked” about the idea, Wilson said. From there, a liaison between Fraternity and Sorority Life and Students for Reproductive Justice was slowly born. 

From initiative creator to president

Wilson has been involved with Students for Reproductive Justice since her first year at Drake University. As a general member her first year, she noticed a gap in access to free sexual health resources on campus. 

She applied for the Condom Collective as a member of SRJ and got a shipment of condoms. This youth-led grassroots movement, run by the nonprofit organization Advocates for Youth, is dedicated to sexual health access and equity for young people. 

Before the FSL liaison was official, the initiative functioned as an informal community effort. Wilson would freely share resources within her residence hall with anyone who requested them. 

On campus, while Student Services provides condom dispensers in the Olmsted Center and residence halls on campus, students in off-campus facility houses for fraternities and sororities were not provided those same resources, Wilson said. 

“No one’s getting in the mood and is like, ‘Oh, let me run to the [Olmsted] student center,’” Wilson said. “We wanted to supply resources to those students who might need them at their homes.” 

SRJ officially established the FSL Condom Distribution Program in the fall of 2024, with Wilson serving in the role since its debut her sophomore year. Today, Wilson is the president of SRJ, and every fraternity and sorority house except one participates in the program. 

The club today 

To organize their expanding outreach, Wilson categorizes SRJ’s work into three main focuses: education, access and involvement.

Programming like their recent collaboration with Shelf Love DSM, which discussed consent in the media, falls under education. Access pertains to tabling events and distributing resources, and involvement consists of their biweekly meetings and recruiting new members. 

In a new program called Regular Access Tabling, SRJ will be in the Olmsted Breezeway on Mondays and Fridays from 11 to 4, handing out condoms, lubricants and emergency contraceptives like Plan B as supplies last. 

While the program’s scheduling may change next semester based on student availability, SRJ’s core priority is to ask students what they want to see from the organization and deliver on that. 

“We do have informational pamphlets, so it is kind of education if people are interested, but the main focus of that event for the student body … is just kind of like, ‘Hey, what do you need? Here’s the access to it,’” Wilson said.

One of the club’s most active access initiatives is a direct-messaging delivery program for emergency contraceptives. Wilson said some students had the misconception that free EC was only distributed to fraternities and sororities through the liaison program, but she emphasized that the DM delivery system is available to the entire student body. 

“Any person… could DM our Instagram, @drake_srj, [and] just say, ‘Hey, I’m a Drake student, I need free access to emergency contraceptives,'” Wilson said. “Usually, one of us is able to get there. We like to promise within 48 hours because EC should be effective within 72 [hours].”

Emergency contraceptives tend to cost upwards of $50 at local pharmacies like CVS or Walgreens, but SRJ’s DM program provides them at no cost to students. To maintain such high-volume distribution, SRJ relies on a fluctuating network of nonprofit donors like Planned Parenthood and Advocates for Youth, which provides semi-regular shipments of up to 500 condoms and 264 doses of emergency contraception at a time.

“Due to different grants and agreements with the nonprofits that donate a lot of our supplies … we’re only allowed to distribute to Drake students,” Wilson said. “Because we’re a [registered student organization] on campus, we also obviously focus our resources on Drake students anyway.”

To ensure sexual health resources are stocked, SRJ coordinates with Carolina Ramos, the Planned Parenthood liaison who oversees Iowa Planned Parenthood Generation Action groups. 

Ramos, a Drake alumna who manages outreach for several Iowa campuses, views the Drake chapter as a critical partner in reaching students.

“With so many attacks on reproductive freedom and misinformation about sexual and reproductive health care, PPGen groups like SRJ are essential for providing resources like contraceptives and informational packets that students might not otherwise have access to,” Ramos said in an email interview. “When students have the knowledge and resources to get care, they can take charge of their own lives, bodies and futures.”

Defining reproductive justice

For Wilson, providing these resources is an everyday practice of reproductive justice in itself. The term is often tied exclusively to the national abortion debate, Wilson said, but SRJ’s concentration is much broader. 

“I’ve seen reproductive justice kind of be diminished into only abortion rights, which are incredibly important, but not all that reproductive justice is,” Wilson said. “It’s also the right to safe testing, the right to pregnancy tests, the right to proper OBGYN care if you choose to continue a pregnancy. It’s being allowed to marry and have relations with whoever you want.” 

Because the definition is so expansive, SRJ ultimately aims to be a safe space for all students to access care and information, Wilson said. 

“We have people who are members of SRJ who have had sex and do enjoy sex. We have people who are members of SRJ who are virgins,” Wilson said. “We don’t discredit or hold more weight to anyone’s experience … because reproductive justice impacts all of us.”

That universal impact is exactly why SRJ refuses to scale back its operations, even as nonprofit funding fluctuates and legislative attacks on reproductive health continue.

“We don’t want to pull back on any of the programs we offer,” Wilson said. “We’re not going to stop doing things because it’s getting more difficult.”