Annual blood drive begins

By Carly Southworth
For the Daily

Michigan is out for blood.

During the next two weeks, a team of enthusiastic nurses and volunteers will be traveling around campus in search of blood. The team is taking it one pint at a time, in hopes of victory in the annual Blood Battle.

For the past 16 years, the University of Michigan and the Ohio State University face off every fall in a two-week blood drive competition. The victor is the school that donates the most pints of blood, with the Blood Drop trophy as a prize.

The University of Michigan, whose efforts are sponsored by the American Red Cross and the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, is trailing Ohio State, eight victories to seven. OSU has held the trophy, which is given away during halftime of the Michigan-Ohio State football game, since 1992.

JOY JACOBS/Daily Nurse Debbie Sise, otherwise known as "Mom," takes blood yesterday from LSA sophomore Steve Waterbrook at East Quad. Waterbrook said he plans to go to medical school and knows the value of donating blood.

The drive kicked off yesterday in East Quad's Greene Lounge. The lounge was quickly converted into a donation center, as cots were brought in and tables were turned into nurse stations. Couches and coffee tables covered with magazines served as a waiting room. Coolers containing juiceboxes, cookies and fruit were set out for donors. Nurses and volunteers waited anxiously with empty blood bags.

Harriet Bright, a registered nurse and Red Cross team coordinator for the event, said the drive has been very successful in the past.

Since the first drive in 1982, a total of 141,109 pints of blood have been donated by the two universities. Each pint can save up to three lives.

"This has been wonderful. We get so much blood from this," Bright said. Part of the success is due to the help of APO and its members, she said. "The students from APO are so dedicated."

Robb Smylie, an Engineering senior, is one of the APO coordinators of the Blood Battle. The APO volunteers' main responsibilities for the event are coordinating volunteers and publicity, reserving rooms on campus and making donation appointments.

"This is the biggest collection point in Michigan for the Red Cross," Smylie said. The drive supplies Southeastern Michigan with most of its blood reserves, collecting about 2,000 pints in the drive's two weeks.

Smylie's co-coordinator, Leonard Cassady, said the drive brings out a lot of students because of its publicity across campus. Cassady, an Engineering junior, said he hopes this year's publicity also has made students aware of a blood shortage in Southeastern Michigan.

LSA first-year student Leah Torres, who donated a pint of blood yesterday, said the drive encourages students to donate for both competitive and humanitarian reasons.

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