Spring Break
Third-annual CAA blood drive
Janhavi Purohit
Issue date: 10/31/08 Section: News
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The CAA this year looks to achieve a goal of 620 pints of blood, according to Heather Lindley, a senior manager of operations for the Red Cross.
According to the Drexel web site, the University is looking for its third-consecutive win in the blood challenge. Last year's event resulted in 3,425 donors and 3,399 units of blood.
According to Lindley, the student turnout was about the same as in years before.
"We always get a lot of students, but this year it seems like it's more or less the same," Lindley said.
Thomas Dahan, program director for the Center for Civic Engagement said the Center for Civic Engagement, has been working with Drexel athletics to organize this event for the last three years. According to Dahan, this year more students seemed to be involved with the event.
"I feel like there are more people giving blood. This year we had 180 individual volunteers helping out with the drive in one way or another," Dahan said.
Many student volunteers this year were freshmen participating through their University 101 classes.
Freshman and business major Gayatri Kamath said she was volunteering as part of her civic engagement requirements for the University 101 class.
"They picked this event for us, and we're required to work five hours, with an hour in training," Kamath said.
Even though Kamath became involved as a class requirement, she would be willing to volunteer again, she added.
For some students, this was their first time giving blood at a CAA drive at Drexel.
"I've always given blood, but this is my first time at CAA," Rob Marquis, a pre-junior biology major, said. "Somebody handed me a flyer, so I just came here."
Marquis added that he was impressed with the "pretty good turnout" of students giving blood at the Behrakis Hall location.
Pat Gordon, senior operations manager for the Red Cross, said she was happy with the large number of students present.
"There are 721 students registered to give blood that I know of, and I know we'll be getting a lot of walk-ins as well," Gordon said. "That's just at Behrakis Hall, too."
Gordon said some of the other locations were understaffed, and extra students were being sent to Behrakis Hall to give blood.
According to associate athletics director Rebecca Weidensaul, there were a total of 1,400 students registered to give blood this year across both the University City and Center City campuses.
Weidensaul said that after seven years, the Blood Challenge has become something of a tradition.
"We have a lot of institutional pride around it," Weidensaul said. "The t-shirts that we wear every Thursday have become almost like collector's pieces now. You can walk downtown, even, and see people wearing them."
The six locations to give blood on Drexel's University City campus were in Behrakis Hall and at the Earle Mack School of Law, the Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, Van Rensselaer Hall and Myers Hall. The Center City campus location was in the Stiles Hall Lounge at Hahnemann.
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