Blood Drive Falling Short, Yale Challenge No Incentive

Despite stepped-up efforts to recruit blood donors. Harvard's current blood drive may not meet last year's levels of the goals set for this year, according to representatives of both the Red Cross and the Harvard-Radcliffe Blood Drive.

This year's drive has faced problems of organization, a high number of deferrals and "no-shows" and a serious lack of faculty participation, said Red Cross Field Director Marie Cloutier Diflo '83. She added that the drive has not attracted a high rate of walk ins to fill gaps in other areas.

Diflo said that, despite a good initial response at Harvard, the donor turn-out has been low in the past three days and there is "no way to gauge" whether the Harvard-Yale competition has helped it toward its 1400-pint goal.

History

The Harvard-Yale Challenge was founded last August at the suggestion of the Cambridge Red Cross in are effort to increase student participation in donating blood. The Challenge introduces a competitive element to the drive: students from Harvard and Yale are vying to see which school gives most liberally.

"It's every Harvard person's dream--to beat Yale" said Stuart A. Kirsch '84-5, publicity coordinator for the drive.

But, a competition like this one is "not in the spirit of why people give blood in the first place," according to Mike S. Grossman '86, who has worked with his roommates Bradford J. Baker '86 and Ralph M. Costello '86 to recruit about 35 percent of Lowell House residents for the drive.

Grossman said that he doesn't think the competitive aspect of the drive impelled anybody to sign up who would not have done so ordinarily.

Lynn Stein '86, recruitment coordinator for the drive, said that most people sign up because giving blood is "such an inherently good thing to do. "I don't know if [the competition] has been as big a draw as the basic need to give blood."

According to Kirsch, the "Doss Yale Make Your Blood Boil?" campaign was just one "new gimmick" that Cambridge Red Cross and on-campus organizers wanted to try to attract donors.

He has also arranged for the local band "O-Positive" to play in support of the drive on Wednesday.

Grossman said that he and his friends "considered dressing up in suits and sunglasses and trench coats" to encourage participation at Lowell House.

In the past, Stein said, publicity efforts have included placing drive announcements in faculty pay envelopes.

A more traditional incentive in this year's drive has been an annual competition sponsored by University Health Services, which donates $75 to the treasury of the House with the highest percentage of "presentors," people who go to give blood, whether or not they actually are allowed to donate. For evers 150 presentors, the drive receives about 120 points of blood.

Dunster House has been victorious in the past two years contests. I his year, however, Dunster has been seriously challenged be Lowell House.

Whatever the tactics involved, organizers on and off-campus are, in the words of Kirsch, "just working hard and hoping people will give blood."