Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: CARLOS MORENO, Special to the Daily A phelbotist extracts blood from a patient.

Media Credit: CARLOS MORENO, Special to the Daily Blood extracted from a donor for the American Red Cross at the Grace Community Center.

Students held a blood drive across the street from SJSU on Monday for the first time since university President Don Kassing suspended on-campus blood drives Jan. 29.

The blood drive, which took place at the Grace Baptist Church, was originally organized by the fraternity Tau Delta Phi. But they were informed four days before the event that organizations affiliated with SJSU cannot hold blood drives off-campus. Instead, those involved must be volunteers with no official affiliation to the university.

The church is on 10th and San Fernando streets.

Mona Helmhold, account manager for donor recruitment with the American Red Cross, said the volunteers did a great job for an off-campus site.

"For every one unit (of blood), you can save up to three lives," said Helmhold.

Blood drives were halted on campus due to the Food and Drug Administration's policy that bans men who have had sex with other men from donating blood. The policy violates the nondiscrimination policy at SJSU.

"They have good intentions," Tau Delta Phi President Dominic Fass said about the decision to suspend blood drives on campus. "I just don't feel like they should be making people who have no say in this unwanted participants of this protest. Because in the end the people who are suffering are those who need (blood) daily."

Kassing met with representatives from the FDA two weeks ago, but he said they told him there wasn't enough evidence to change the policy.

"Red Cross indicated that they might do something very close to the campus, and we encourage that," Kassing said at a news conference Monday in reference to the drive. "I'm not saying to anybody don't give blood. In fact, I'd say please give blood. But we're not going to do it on campus."

During the blood drive, Helmhold said that about 40 percent of the original 80 people who signed up to donate blood didn't show up.

"It's moving smooth, we've had the beds full all day," she said. "But I think we're going to obtain a lot less. But I don't know if it's being off campus as much as maybe being St. Patrick's Day."

Another student who volunteered for the drive, Marlyn Adalawan, 27, a senior social science major, said the event was going really well.

"From what I understand we've been booked all day," Adalawan said.

Gabriela Hill, 22, a senior political science major, donated blood at the drive. She said she has volunteered at blood drives and donated blood before. She decided to donate due to the controversy surrounding the suspension of blood drives.

"I think it's a sticky situation," Hill said. "It's a matter of people in the administration on campus deciding whether they are going to advocate for people that are being discriminated against, you could say, or if you are going to allow the population to have the ability to have blood transfusions."

"Now in this area, we have the least amount of donors in the whole United States," said Helmhold. "Nationally about 36, 37 percent of the population are eligible at any one time, and out of that about 5 to 6 percent donate. But here in this area, Northern California, it's only 2 percent."

Helmhold said that between blood drives SJSU held on campus and drives held by Stanford Blood Center at SJSU, there could be about 600 units of blood that don't get donated because of the suspension of blood drives.

Unaffiliated SJSU students will be holding another blood drive on April 8 at the First Christian Church, across the street from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, said Fass.

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