More than one hundred students piled into the Louis Room in Norris to give blood Wednesday, as the group LifeSource made away with nearly one hundred pints of blood, well over its goal of 60 units, one of the drive’s supervisors said.
“Everything went pretty smooth,” supervisor Miriam Gutierrez said. The blood drive ran from noon to 6 p.m., and was one day instead of the usual two.
At the last blood drive at Northwestern, 126 pints were collected over a two-day span, Gutierrez said.
“When I came, the place was crowded. I stayed in line for 30 minutes. And now I have been in the chair for another 30 minutes,” Weinberg junior Renee Calvert said when she was called to give blood.
“It’s kind of cool to sit in a chair and say ‘I have given blood,’” she said.
Communication sophomore Genny Szymanski was one of more than 20 students not allowed to give blood. She was turned away because of an unusually high iron content in her blood, one of the many tests run on potential volunteers. She gave blood last year, and her friend got her to give again.
“I said I wouldn’t do it again; it was scary! But she reminded me that is it is important.”