Northwestern University asks a lot of its students. Demanding courses push students to their limits on a daily basis. Sometimes sleepless nights are the only way to keep up with the work. Tuition alone will set you back a little over $37,000, and that doesn’t even include room and board, random power outages and city of Evanston sanctions on our water. Even textbooks can set you back $500 or more. The students know and accept that it takes a lot to make it here, but this week Northwestern got a little too greedy. It’s not satisfied with money, sleepless nights or the countless other sacrifices. This time it wants more.
You heard me right. This past week, in a joint effort between Student Blood Services and LifeSource, AIESEC and Kappa Phi Lambda hosted their annual Winter Blood Drive in Norris. The school that has taken so much from its students wants a little more. The school is not satisfied with taking only our social lives away. Now they want to take our actual lives away.
We all know the price of Northwestern extends far beyond the realm of dollars and cents. Who hasn’t stayed up all night studying for an orgo midterm, a French oral exam, or a theater final only to fall asleep during the exam itself? Or who has forgone a drunken night of dancing, making out and throwing up (rinse and repeat) at The Keg to learn everything they possibly can about Nietzsche in one night? The students of Northwestern put their sweat and tears into everything they do here, but the administration isn’t happy with just sweat and tears. They want blood, too.
At the Winter Blood Drive, LifeSource, the Chicago area supplier, collected 134 units of blood over the course of two days. This was a strong message sent to the administration by the student body: they can hold classes as scheduled on days with temperatures fifteen degrees below zero, they can pull $100,000 from student organizations, and they can make us forget what having friends was like. They can do a lot of things as long as we graduate with a degree that says Northwestern on it, but they can not take our blood.
I’m glad to see such solidarity among the student body — there were a mere 134 donations out of 8,284 students, according to Eli Cadoff, a representative from student blood services. That’s a little over one-and-a-half percent. It really makes me proud, because I know how hard it is to fight the temptation to give blood sometimes. The fat cats at the Red Cross will tell you that someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds, and that you can save up to three lives with one donation. The numbers are hard to refute, but Northwestern students have made it clear that we go through too much to have to deal with such silly things as blood donations.
I’ll put up with a lot to get through Northwestern. I can deal with financial aid representatives laughing at my father for asking if I could get more money. I can deal with questionable assignments and baffling requirements (believe me, I’m in Medill.) I can even put up with exorbitant tuition costs, but what I won’t tolerate are these bloodsuckers asking for the last thing I can hold onto, my blood. It’s too precious to me.
**Please be aware that the above article is entirely fashioned and directed as a satire. Donating blood is a selfless act of generosity that can, in fact, save up to three separate lives. The work of Student Blood Services, LifeSource, AIESEC, and Kappa Phi Lambda is an invaluable service to the Northwestern community, and I implore all who are eligible to give blood to do so, if not for the potential lives to be saved, for the free food afterwards.