February 14 marked another Red Cross blood drive in partnership with Luther’s Student Activities Council (SAC). This year, the event fell on Valentine’s Day, and the holiday’s tradition of affectionate gift-giving aided the Luther community in surpassing last year’s donor turnout.
Throughout the month of January and into February, pink posters could be found across campus. The flyers, created and posted by SAC student workers, described the blood drive’s event details along with the slogan, “Give the Gift of Life this Valentine’s Day.”
SAC student worker Ava Troff (‘27) helped organize this year’s blood drive and commented on the process of planning and implementing the drive
“Last semester it was Darbi [Dunning (‘26) organizing it,] and she had initiated the talk with the Red Cross about when [to] do this blood drive and what we need to do,” Troff said. “She typed out this big to-do list of everything that we had to do. Before winter break and then during J-Term, I was just slowly picking off the to-do list.”
The intentions for this year’s blood drive were made clear by Troff and Dunning: grow the blood drive and get more students, faculty, staff and community members donating.
Despite worrying about having fewer donors this year, one day before the donation date, SAC had 72 donors signed up — surpassing SAC’s goal of 66 participants and the number of last year’s drive. In addition to the student donors, the crowd in attendance on the day of the drive included a number of non-students.
“Compared to last year, it’s bigger,” Troff said. “Hopefully it’ll prove to the Red Cross that next year we can hold an even bigger blood drive. That was our whole goal this year — to prove that we can do more than what they think we can.”
The drive was held in the Mott-Borlaug room, which brought donors in from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. All the while, Red Cross staff – clad in red scrubs – performed their routines collecting blood. At the door, Troff took a shift checking people into their appointments and welcoming walk-ins. One student, Ian Ramirez (27’), shared why he decided to donate blood at this Valentine’s Day event.
“Just because it’s Valentine’s Day, if you don’t have a Valentine, you’ve got to give the love out somewhere else,” Ramirez said.
For students and other donors interested in where their donated blood is used, they can download the American Red Cross app, Blood Donor. The app can show you the locations where your blood is used, and it can notify you when and where the closest blood drive might be, as well as viewing the locations where your blood is used.
