The blood drive at Walker Gym on Wednesday was a huge success with many students volunteering to have needles poked in them for several minutes to extract some of their oxygen-carrying donuts, alphabetic antigens, and buffy coats (that’s a real part of blood) for transfer to patients in need. Off the Press would like to formally thank everyone who participated, as well as all the staff involved in organizing and running the event.
Off the Press has never been to a blood drive before, so our reporters were not quite sure what to expect. We had heard tall tales of people walking into hospitals with buckets of blood to donate. The implication behind these tall tales is not that these people donated their own blood, but that they obtained it through illegal and likely nefarious means. To this end, we made sure we brought extra security in the form of one of our editor’s cats to scare away any intruders, although the cat seems to have caused more blood to spill than it may have prevented. The cat was cute though, and its name was Boobear.
Most impressive was the performance by one student to whom the nurses ended up hooking up a fire hose due to his remarkable rate of production. We approached him for a quote, but the massive pump driving the hose was too loud, so we couldn’t hear anything he was saying, and he also couldn’t hear anything we were saying. It was a communications disaster, and we will be sure to work on upgrading our microphones. We did get a chance to ask the nurses about this exciting individual, but they had no explanation. “It just keeps coming out,” one of them told us before connecting the hose to a new tank. “If we didn’t have the hose, there would be a big mess on the floor right now.”
While our reporters did not partake in the humanitarian festivities themselves, they did spend a substantial amount of time at the snack table. I, the editor-in-chief, was told this was for reporting purposes on the quantity and quality of the snacks, and I didn’t have enough backup reporters to risk contradicting them. Quality reporters, like the ones at Off the Press, are hard to come by, and harder still when they spend most of their time out on assignment reporting on the snack table.
Off the Press would like to officially state our position in favor of donating blood if you are able, mainly because they give you the aforementioned free snacks, which our editors greatly appreciated. If nothing else, from all the labeling that was going on at the drive, we can confirm that there were a variety of blood types being donated, much like the Off Center’s Variety Show co-hosted with SITTV tonight 4/8 at 9pm in B118, which you are cordially invited to. Hope to see you there!
Off The Press is a satirical Opinion column written and organized by Off Center, often used to joke about current Stevens issues and campus news. It is currently organized by Off Center President, Matthew Brantl.
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