On Friday, October 23, students participated in the annual Red Cross blood drive run by Ms.Deery and the National Honor Society. In previous years the blood drive has been a huge success. This year, however, there were a couple difficulties faced by the Red Cross and the NHS blood drive committee.

The drive started off slow due to five Red Cross employees cancelling last minute. This pushed the start time of the drive to about an hour and a half late and resulted in no “Double Red” donations. In a double red donation, a special machine separates two units of red blood cells and allows the remaining blood components to be returned to the donor. The NHS Committee tried their best in helping in any way possible, but “there wasn’t really anything else [they] could do” said blood drive committee head, senior Nora Snyder. Snyder continued and explained that “it wasn’t anything within our control besides handling the problems of letting donors know what was going on”.

On top of low staff, the data retrieval program that is needed for the drive had technical problems which caused further delay. In the end, only about 15 out of the many that signed up were able to donate blood. Even with these problems, senior Zach Landau believes that it was still mildly successful because “[Red Cross] did get some blood which is still useful”.

Red Cross will be returning again in the spring of next year on April 7th. Ms. Deery said that the Red Cross has “assured her that there will be adequate personnel for the spring drive.”