Fifty-one Whitman students voluntarily surrendered a pint of their blood to the Red Cross on Tuesday, March 30, as part of the Cesar Chavez Blood Drive put on by the Global Awareness House. The blood will be used by hospitals in the greater Walla Walla area; any extra will be shipped to Haiti as part of the Red Cross’ ongoing relief efforts.

Global Awareness House RA Maharin Ahmed said she was motivated to organize the drive for a variety of reasons.

“Part of the expectation of the Global Awareness House is to raise awareness about different issues,” she said. “We decided that this is a good platform for us to help Haiti.”

The blood drive is also critical in that it will benefit the Walla Walla community.

“A lot of surgeries in Walla Walla are depending on this blood drive,” said  Ahmed.

Levi Martin, the Red Cross Collections Operation supervisor for the drive, said he can’t guarantee that blood from this specific drive will go to Haiti. The Red Cross has been working to maintain adequate levels of blood at all of its blood centers. However, if a center has a surplus of a particular type of blood, that blood will be sent to Haiti.

“We’ll make sure it serves the hospitals here,” he said.

The drive was part of the nationwide Cesar Chavez Blood Drive Challenge, where colleges hold blood drives on or around March 31, Chavez’s birthday. Chavez was a union organizer for the United Farm Workers, and is best remembered for his campaign to boycott California grapes in protest of the labor conditions faced by the migrant farm workers who grew them. Ahmed said one of the purposes of these blood drives is to encourage Latino donors.

“We’re not reaching out to [Latinos] and getting enough of them in,” said Martin.

This is a problem because it creates shortages of certain blood types. Although transfusion recipients can generally accept blood from donors with their blood type, some blood types are more common in certain races. Martin said that A and O type blood is common in the United States, but in many other countries, other types would be more prevalent. In addition, people who receive many transfusions can become sensitive to blood antigens and need a more specific donor match. For these more specific matches, it’s difficult to supply blood for Latinos and other people of color with white donors.

Ahmed said that she had partnered with Club Latino members to reach out to Walla Walla’s Latino community and encourage them to donate.

Another critical component of the drive were the student volunteers, including several from the Student Health Advisory Committee, who signed in donors and monitored the canteen area, where juice and snacks are served to those who had given blood.

SHAC President Fritz Siegert said he was volunteering to support the drive and promote health.

“I’ve given blood in the past, and I think it’s a really amazing thing to literally give something of yourself to help someone else,” he said.

Several other SHAC members also volunteered at the drive. Siegert felt that helping with a blood drive fits in with the club’s larger mission.

“The biggest point of SHAC is raising health awareness,” he said. For him, that extends to looking out for other people’s health if you’re in a position to do so.

First-year Henry Gales said that for him, donating blood was a simple way to help someone else.

“The people who the blood’s going to need it more than I do,” he said.