Blood drive brings in fewer donations than usual
After struggling to find students to donate, StuCo draws in 53 successful donors
In order to stop the bleeding at the site where the needle was injected, senior Madison Remijio, on Thursday, March 29, elevates her arm.
March 26, 2016
StuCo and Red Cross hosted the spring blood drive on Thursday, March 24, collecting 53 units of blood from 53 donors, but falling short of their 70-unit goal.
According to StuCo sponsor Erica Crist, finding donors was StuCo’s biggest challenge for this drive in particular.
While eating to help her body recover, senior Madison Remijio, on Thursday, March 23, watches videos and laughs with some sophomore StuCo members around the snack table.
Although she said it may have been due to busy schedules conflicting with donation times, the number of students signed up this year was significantly less than usual.
“Our main challenge was getting enough students who were able to donate and who wanted to donate” Crist said. “We had a lot of conflicts that day with sports, state testing, visitors from Shawnee, there was just a lot going on in the school, so just getting enough students to donate was our biggest challenge.”
Senior class representative Hawkeye Mitchell also acknowledged this issue, saying they had “maybe the lowest number of people sign up since I’ve been at this school.” Mitchell believes it’s important to take the time to donate if possible because of the far-reaching impact blood donations can have.
“It’s important because every pint donated can literally potentially save a life,” Mitchell said. “The more blood they have on hand, the more people they can help, and when more people donate blood, there are more opportunities to save a life.”
One student who was able to donate was senior Claudia Meredith, who has donated blood at every school blood drive since she turned 16, in addition to one time outside of school. Meredith enjoys being able to help others, and plans to seek more opportunities to donate blood in the near future.
On Thursday, March 24, sophomore Cameron Loew lays down to rest while giving blood with an ice pack cooling her down.
“I signed up because I believe it’s a good way to give back and it doesn’t take much time or planning. It’s important because a lot of people need blood to get better,” Meredith said. “I would donate again and probably will at some point this summer.”
Despite having an unusually low number of sign ups, Crist was ultimately satisfied with how the drive went, keeping in mind additional drives StuCo has held throughout the school year.
“I was pleased with it,” Crist said. “I would have liked to have made our goal of 70 units of blood but I also know that we hold blood drives in the summer and winter now, which we didn’t used to, so that makes a big difference also.”
