For Nayelli, becoming a Peer Health Educator (PHE) came from a very personal sense of purpose. She says she has always cared deeply about making a difference in the issues that matter to her, and peer health education felt like a place where that kind of work could take real form. Many of the concerns she cares about, especially around reproductive health, can be addressed through education, and joining the Office of Student Wellness Education & Violence Prevention (WEVP) as a Peer Health Educator gave her a way to do that.
That commitment eventually grew into one of the most important projects she has worked on at F&M: a campaign to provide free Plan B on campus.
The idea began with a simple comparison. Nayelli had seen that a friend’s college in Iowa offered students access to free Plan B. For her, that raised an immediate question: why didn’t F&M have the same resource? Once she became a Peer Health Educator, she knew she wanted to make that issue the focus of her semester project. She had originally hoped to launch it in the fall of 2024, but the process quickly showed her how difficult it could be to create change even around something that is medically very safe.
She explains that obtaining Plan B itself was the easiest part. The real obstacle was getting approval to distribute it on campus. Because it is a pill, the college raised concerns about liability and about the possibility that providing it could be interpreted as offering medical advice. Nayelli was careful about that distinction from the beginning. She made sure not to present herself as giving medical guidance, yet the legal concern still had to be addressed. In order for the campaign to move forward, she personally signed a waiver that made her the sole person responsible if any legal issue were to arise. If something happened, she would be the one held accountable.
That detail reveals just how much personal responsibility she was willing to carry in order to make this resource available. It also made clear to her and the WEVP office that this arrangement could not be the long-term answer. During the spring of 2025, the campaign succeeded in bringing free Plan B to campus, and no legal problems followed, but the structure behind it was still fragile. From that point forward, Nayelli was already thinking about what a more durable system would require.
Her reasons for caring so much about this work are tied to both access and education. She speaks with a strong sense of urgency about how expensive emergency contraception can be, usually around $35 to $50 per pill, which for many students is simply not feasible. That financial barrier matters on a college campus, where students often have limited funds and little room for unexpected expenses. During the initial phase of the campaign, Nayeli worked with the WEVP Office to make free Plan B available to students through tabling events at CC. After she went abroad, the initiative moved to the Student Wellness Center, where students can now access Plan B at no cost.
She also cares about the misinformation that surrounds Plan B. In her view, students need accurate and practical information. She points out that many people still do not know what Plan B actually does. Some do not know that it works by delaying ovulation. Some do not know that it will not work if someone is already ovulating. Some do not know that its effectiveness changes once a person is above 165 lb, or that there are alternatives such as Ella. For Nayelli, these details influence whether someone can actually make informed decisions about their own body and health.
Her campaign therefore came from a conviction that students deserve both access and knowledge, and that neither one should depend on luck.
When Nayelli left campus to study abroad, the work paused, but her commitment to it did not. Coming back, she says she felt excited to begin again, even though the process had already shown her how exhausting advocacy can be. She describes much of the effort as feeling like “hitting your head against the wall,” a phrase that captures the frustration of trying to move something forward through repeated bureaucratic hurdles. Even so, she returned to it because of how deeply she believes in the issue. She says she wishes she herself had received this kind of education in high school. Because she was eventually able to gain that knowledge, she wants other students to have equitable access to the same information and to reproductive healthcare more generally.
That sense of unfinished work is what led her to found Students for Reproductive Justice.
This new club gave her a way to continue the campaign through a more stable structure and with stronger institutional support. She notes that because the organization is tied to Planned Parenthood Generation Action, some of the legal concerns that complicated the original campaign can now be covered in a more secure way. This means the work does not have to rest on one student individually carrying the risk.
Her vision for the club began with one very concrete goal: getting free Plan B on campus in a form that lasts, ideally before she graduates. She wants every student to know that it exists and to know exactly how to access it. At the same time, her hopes for the organization reach further. She wants it to be a place where students can ask questions, receive clear and comprehensive information, and learn about the resources available to them on and off campus. She also imagines the club as a site of advocacy, one that can push for changes within the campus framework where reproductive justice can be better supported. Education remains central to that vision. So does the idea of making reproductive health resources genuinely accessible rather than technically available but difficult to find, expensive, or surrounded by confusion.
What stands out in Nayelli’s reflection is how much this process has taught her about leadership and advocacy. She says it taught her that when confronted with barriers, the conversation cannot end there. In her experience, making social change means continuing to push even when every step seems to produce another obstacle. It means pushing forward through frustration, continuing when it feels like you are not being heard, and trusting that persistence can eventually create an opening. Her understanding of leadership seems rooted in endurance, in the willingness to keep fighting for something even when the result is uncertain.
She also places this work in the particular context of F&M. For Nayelli, reproductive justice matters on this campus because students arrive with very different educational backgrounds. Some have never had comprehensive sexual education. Others may have had some education but still do not fully understand reproductive health. College is also a time when many students become sexually active, which means they are navigating these questions at a moment of vulnerability. In that setting, access to information and resources carries immediate significance.
When she imagines a campus that truly supports reproductive health, she describes one where information about resources is clear, visible, and easy to find. She imagines free and accessible reproductive health resources on campus. She imagines a culture where people are comfortable having direct conversations about reproductive justice, including topics that are often treated as taboo. She wants a campus where students are not afraid to talk about experiences that are much more common than many people realize, including taking Plan B or having an abortion. Her vision is rooted in honesty and a refusal to let stigma silence people.
The student response to her work affirmed for her that the need is real. She says the reaction from students was very positive. She did not receive negative feedback from them. The criticism came instead from adults who worried that access to emergency contraception would encourage promiscuity, a claim she points out is unsupported by evidence. That contrast seems to have reinforced something important in her work: students understood the campaign as a matter of care, access, and practical support.
Nayelli’s work shows what it takes to build change on a college campus. It takes persistence. It takes a willingness to keep going through bureaucratic resistance. It takes believing that students deserve trustworthy information and real access to care. Through the free Plan B campaign and now through Students for Reproductive Justice, she has turned that belief into sustained action, creating something that reaches beyond one project and toward a different kind of campus culture.
Nayelli’s work is another example of what Peer Health Educators and the WEVP Office make possible on this campus. Much of this work happens without visibility, but it shapes how students access care, how they learn, and how they support each other in moments that matter.
Maria Fernanda Araoz Pozo is a contributing writer. Her email is maraozpo@fandm.edu.