In need
Donations should pour in year round

Sept. 11 was a day of great tragedy and mourning. But were people just sitting around, staring at Tom Brokaw and wrestling with intermingling feelings of sadness and anger?

No, people were out making a difference. They felt an overwhelming sense of caring and compassion and felt compelled to go and give blood. After all, other than giving money it was basically the only way we could make a tangible difference in the lives of the survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Blood banks and Sept. 11 charity funds were flooded in the weeks of the aftermath to the point where many blood suppliers even had to ask people to stop giving blood because they just didn’t have enough storage capacity for everything being sent to them. The Red Cross even received criticism for allocating Sept. 11 fund donations to other uses.

However, more than six months after the tragedy, the situation has changed substantially. Blood donation centers recommend a 56 day waiting period before donating blood once given. Obviously, more than 56 days have passed since the couple of months following Sept. 11 and donations are now below the averages prior to this past September.

We all felt good about ourselves when we gave blood six months ago, but thousands of people are still in desperate need. Just because they are not hospitalized as the result of a terrorist attack doesn’t make them any less deserving of our blood donations.

Alpha Chi Omega is sponsoring a blood drive Tuesday through Thursday in the Student Center and the total donations from yesterday were less than satisfactory. Only 40 people set the 30 minutes aside to donate Tuesday.

Sure, we may not be able to see the difference we make by giving blood now. But that doesn’t mean a difference isn’t being made and that blood isn’t desperately in need.
Is the woman who barely made it out of the World Trade Center more deserving than the girl suffering with hemophilia?

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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002