Riley Bodo stands at the front of Ponder 011, laughing as trivia teams stumble through questions regarding sexual health, LGBTQ+ culture and feminist history.
In her large, square-rimmed glasses, she emcees the event with easy confidence— calling out answers, cracking jokes and keeping the energy up as the teams fervently jot down answers on small whiteboards.
Just weeks earlier, the Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA) chapter at UNC Asheville had little to no activity. Now, with a refreshed executive board and Bodo as president, it’s hosting events like this one— equal parts irreverent and educational, designed to draw students in.
The second time I meet Bodo, is at her dorm. She welcomes me in, leads me to her single and we sit together on the floor. She lets me peruse the shelves— let me just say, Bodo has a stellar record collection— before handing me a CD case.
“Songs for Joan” is stamped in purple onto the case’s white paper cover, with pink tulips flourishing on the cover’s edge. I gasp as I open the case.
She’s written out a tracklist on the inside cover, and one of the tracks is an absolute favorite of mine— “Four Women” by Nina Simone. I think we’re going to get along.
Bodo tells me they’re from Huntersville, just 40 minutes away from where I grew up. She originally had different plans for after high school.
She’d had a fee waiver and applied to numerous colleges— getting into most of them.
“I was going to, like, run away and go to NYU— take out a bunch of loans. But then I thought, actually, that would ruin my life,” she says, with a laugh.
She also considered attending community college but changed her mind right before decisions were due.
A week before college decision day, while her parents were out of town, Bodo snuck out with a friend and drove to Asheville in the middle of the night. They slept at an overlook, out in the open. By morning, she had made up her mind.
“This is where I want to go,” she recalls thinking. “And also, we saw fine shit skating around campus.”
I can’t help but laugh— her authenticity is refreshing.
Now, a UNCA sophomore and president of PPGA on campus, Bodo channels that same impulsive certainty into rebuilding the campus organization into a hub for reproductive health resources, sex education and community.
“Right before you came over, I was actually planning all of fall semester and we have a bunch of stuff coming up,” she says, with a small smile, after I ask her how her first semester as PPGA president is going.
The biggest initiative PPGA plans to take on next semester is getting menstrual products back in public restrooms on campus, says Bodo. UNCA’s Student Government Association president Obi Osaro confirmed the news on his personal Instagram story on April 2, 2026.
Elated at the news, I squeal. Oh, how many times I’ve had to shamefully waddle from class to class with a bundle of toilet paper uncomfortably stuffed in the gusset of my underwear because I didn’t have any products on me— what a relief! I’m sure many others share this experience. It’s a personal initiative for Bodo, too.
“There have been times where I couldn’t afford menstrual products, and I just had to bleed through. It was rough,” she says.
We swap period horror stories for a couple of minutes before returning to business.
In addition to reinstalling menstrual products in bathrooms across campus, Bodo tells me that PPGA has more educational-but-cheeky events coming up next semester— she describes a “pregnancy-spooky-game night” in October with education on the sexual politics of Halloween, which sounds particularly exciting.
“We’re working on getting menstrual cups, menstrual discs and menstrual underwear to provide at an event in September where we’ll talk about how to map your menstrual cycle— how to eat and exercise in order to support your hormones and mood throughout the different phases, what the phases are and what your body might be going through,” Bodo says. “Because so many people are not educated about it.”
She tells me that PPGA also wants to start a community garden, with the ultimate goal of its harvest going to local homeless communities.
“Specifically, we want to provide farm-to-table ingredients to a domestic violence center in Asheville called Helpmate. We’re currently working on setting up a donation drive for them,” she says.
The reason they’re setting everything now, Bodo tells me, is the bureaucratic nature of working as an organization under Planned Parenthood’s name.
“There are so many loops you have to jump through as a student organization—especially one like PPGA that, even though it’s youth-led, is kind of outsourced,” she says. “All of our communications with our PPGA coordinators are digital.”
According to Bodo, the PPGA chapter receives roughly $100 to $150 a month from Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT), which Bodo describes as the overarching organization that the chapter operates under. That doesn’t mean that the money is always enough.
“All of the events that PPGA has done this year have been funded with mainly my own money. I think it’s just so important to give back to the community. Asheville is a community that I am so willing to give back to because I know that it will pour back into me as much as possible,” she says.
I ask her if they’d ever consider having the club go rogue due to the arduous, bureaucratic process needed to host every event. Getting every event approved through multiple channels sounds tiring, no?
“I think it’s easier to stay with Planned Parenthood because we have more resources, and it’s important to uplift Planned Parenthood as something more than a provider of abortions,” she says.
Bodo tells me she hopes to get into law. A double major in economics and English literature with a minor in women, gender, and sexuality studies, Bodo articulates herself well. Before realizing she wanted to get into law, she was passionate about journalism— especially human rights journalism.
“When I was younger, I was really interested in war journalism— specifically of the Iraq War, covering human rights violations. I thought it was a really powerful thing to be a journalist. And then I slowly realized that I didn’t want to be shot,” she says.
Bodo pivoted to law, which she says she believed she could make a greater difference with.
“Also, I just don’t think I’m most people’s cup of tea because I have autism— I tried to be a real boots-on-the-ground journalist, senior year of high school and my first semester at UNCA. It just didn’t turn out,” she says, with a shrug. “People were like, ‘Oh, this bitch is weird— this bitch is awkward as fuck! Get her off the camera!’”
I laugh again. I remember my first awkward lapses when I first started interviewing people— and I still have my shortcomings here and there.
Bodo shares that she’s also writing a novel, which she hopes to publish by graduation.
“I have half of it finished, and it starts with the main character recounting a very vivid, lucid dream that she had about meeting God, and he was actually the devil. Like, the white man’s God is actually the devil.”
She tells me more details of the novel’s premise, which is full of drama, depravity, and intrigue— it’s going to give American novelist Ottessa Moshfegh a run for her money. I tell her I want to read it.
“I feel like I tell a lot of people about it, but I feel kind of embarrassed about my passion for the literary arts because I grew up in a really conservative household where they were very much on the ‘don’t go into humanities because you won’t make any money’ train,” Bodo says.
This experience partially informed her choice to go into law, but Bodo found that the law path also ties into her passions for economics and politics.
Bodo went to their first women’s march in the seventh grade with their stepmom and a group of people from the Young Democrats of Concord.
“Going there and feeling that community— and feeling so uplifted after growing up in a household with my mom and stepdad who are very conservative— felt so empowering,” they say. “That’s really when I knew that I wanted to be a spokesperson for human rights, which initially led me to journalism and ultimately has led me to law.”
She tells me that her mother was a single teen mom and never really cared about any of her five children going to college.
“I think sensing that bitterness and experiencing it growing up really swayed me more towards my dad and my stepmother’s beliefs. They are Satanists, pagans, whatever you may want to call it, and they are very compassionate people. Very intelligent people, despite never having gone to college or anything. They care about people. They really inspired me more than anyone else— as well as my grandfather and grandmother on my dad’s side.”
Hunter S. Thompson and John Waters are also inspirations, she says.
“There’s something so empowering about recognizing the filth and depravity of Western society through the lens of LGBTQ culture,” she says of John Waters.
She’s totally speaking my language. I ask her what her plans are for life after UNCA.
“After UNCA, I’m kind of conflicted,” they say. “Depending on my personal finances, I don’t know if I will be going to get my master’s in public policy— which is what I would ultimately like to do before going to law school— or just going to law school.”
That makes sense, I say.
“The post-grad trip I’m taking— that I might actually blow all my law school money on— is going to Vietnam,” Bodo says. “I’ve always been so fascinated with going somewhere I don’t know much about. I don’t speak the language. Basically, I want to travel solo and have a silent retreat. I think it would be so weird for me and I want to experience it before really settling down. But also, I don’t know if I really want to settle down.”
For law school, she tells me she’s set on Notre Dame—it’s a beautiful campus and her top law school.
“But like, if Harvard wants me? I guess I’ll go!” she jokes.
She tells me that after school, she wants to work in law for a couple of years and do some pro bono immigration work.
“And win a couple of cases, maybe— I hope,” she says. “Then save up some money, start a business. I’m really passionate about making drinks, like as a barista, so maybe that and selling books, movies, CDs, whatever.”
It sounds like a nice plan. I ask her what she’s most proud of so far.
“I’m so proud of the way I’ve grown in college. I was so stifled in high school— I mean, not in middle school, I was all ‘My Chemical Romance,’ black skinny jeans— but in high school, I was really trapped within myself, didn’t really know who I was. I really found myself at college, and I’m really glad that I did.”
I’m glad she did, too. I ask her if there’s anything in particular that she wants to be remembered for during her time at UNCA.
“Just PPGA, honestly. I really have been trying to communicate with freshmen and sophomores to increase their participation in PPGA because I don’t want it to end— I don’t want the club to cease helping the community when Mia— my vice president— and I graduate.”
With the upcoming events Bodo described to me, I have no doubt that PPGA will certainly be able to draw in fresh blood next year.
“I think right now we do have that. It makes me so happy, and all I can hope is that our social coordinator, Lila, who works closely with me and Mia, continues to do what’s best for PPGA. She’s really passionate and I really, truly think she is an inspiring, empowered young person,” she says.
For now, Bodo excitedly waits for what’s to come next semester.
“I literally can’t imagine myself anywhere else,” she says about UNCA. “I think it would have been so much fun to go to a bigger city, but Asheville is such a tight-knit community. Everyone I surround myself with is so down to earth, and I’ve just made so many really close friends. I’ve met so many cool people, and it’s just been amazing— I love it here.”
Later, after I’ve left Bodo’s dorm, I’m still thinking about the CD. “Songs for Joan,” stamped in purple, pink flowers on the cover. It’s a small thing— but it isn’t, really.
It’s the same care Bodo brings to everything else— the way she talks about PPGA, her passion for law and literature, the way she wants people to have access to things they’ve gone without.
Some of it looks like trivia nights and silly games. Some of it looks like pads and tampons restocked in Ramsey Library’s bathrooms. Either way, it’s intentional care for the community.
If nothing else, PPGA will at least make sure fewer people are stuffing toilet paper into their underwear between classes.
But if Bodo and her current executive board have anything to do with it, it’ll be a lot more than that.
