April Blood Donations Will Help the Community
by Ashley Mannes

Virginia Tech’s Squires Student Center is hosting the Blacksburg Red Cross on Tuesday, April 25th and Wednesday, April 26th, encouraging students and faculty to donate blood and help out their community.  “The Virginia Tech student body has almost twice the population of Blacksburg, so students are very valuable resources for blood donations,” said Virginia Tech Red Cross Club President Katherine Frasca.

According to Frasca, 21, the Blacksburg Red Cross, with the assistance of the Red Cross Club and the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, comes to Tech’s campus once a month in order to recruit as many blood donors as possible.

For the month of April, the drive will be located in Squires Student Center in either the Old Dominion Ballroom or the Colonial Ballroom, depending on availability.  The drive will be held from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on both April 25th and 26th.  Prior to the actual blood drive, the Red Cross Club and APO will hold “bloodsits” to sign up donors the week of April 17th to the 20th from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the Drillfield.  Individuals may also sign up online at the American Red Cross website, http://www.redcross.org/index.html.

“There is always an urgent need for blood, particularly types B and O,” Frasca said. 

This is because the Red Cross is responsible for providing blood to local hospitals in order for them to supply their cancer, leukemia and organ transplant patients with enough blood to live.  

The Red Cross website says that in order to donate you must be 17 years of age, weigh at least 110 pounds, be in good health and have waited 56 days (eight weeks) since your last donation. 

Frasca warned that when signing up to donate blood students and faculty must make sure that they “set aside an hour and a half to two hours to donate, if you have class or another commitment.”

Karen Peters, 20, a business student at Tech, tries to donate blood every 56 days.  “I try to donate as often as possible,” she said, “because it is such a fast and easy way to give back to the community and the nurses and volunteers are always extremely friendly.”  “Everyone at the drives are there in the interest of helping others and that is a really rewarding feeling,” she added.

Both the Virginia Tech Red Cross Club and Alpha Phi Omega encourage students and faculty to donate as often as they can and help the American Red Cross give back to the Blacksburg community.  For more information about any of the organizations please visit their websites found through the Virginia Tech website, www.vt.edu.