By Staff Writer Jonathan Ko
Regarding the 2016 MSJ Fall Blood Drive, Stanford Blood Center Account Manager Elisa Manzanares said, “With [MSJ’s] commitment to the Stanford Blood Center, and to the patients we serve, [MSJ has] helped make possible lifesaving blood products that give critically ill patients a second chance.”
Senior Sophia Huang and Activities Director Ben Breazeale ran the event in partnership with the Stanford Blood Center. The two began work on the Blood Drive in mid-September, meeting with a Stanford Blood Center representative to review goals for the event. Huang and the other L2 students ran an aggressive publicity campaign, collecting forms at the student store, distributing promotional items, and even setting up a Blood Drive registration booth in the Bell Tower Quad, something that had never been done before.
The morning of October 3, Huang and other L2 students set up sign-in and sign-out booths outside the B-Wing Cafeteria in preparation for the event, and workers from the Stanford Blood Center arrived and set up their equipment. Throughout the day, registered students were called from their classes to have their blood drawn in the B-Wing Cafeteria, then escorted back to their classes.
Huang and Breazeale initially feared decreased volunteer turnout due to a new requirement stating that both 16- and 17-year-olds need parental consent forms due to the Zika virus. In previous years, consent forms were only required for 16-year-olds. However, 97 donors, 54 of them first-time donors, still participated and the drive collected 81 units to meet its goal of 70 units. The Blood Drive donated enough blood to potentially impact 243 patients.
MSJ has been organizing student blood drives for decades. Breazeale said, “Without extremely caring Mission students who donate their blood and without the dedicated, hard-working, caring student leaders that we have at Mission, there would be thousands and thousands of people over the years that did not get the lifesaving blood they needed.”
Photo Courtesy Stanford Blood Center
