I have no idea, my campus that I was Greek at never had any issues with it because we didn't do a Greek blood drive. As for my current campus, it's Jesuit and that's really all that needs to be said.

That question was put in place BY the Blood Center, not by us. They obviously did it for a reason. I asked about the do not use sticker at my high school blood drive, and that's the reason the blood center lady gave me.

That clause is obviously an outdated clause, when many homosexual males were contracting HIV/AIDS or thought to be contracting it. It should be removed.

And it's asked to everyone, every time they give blood.

I used to give blood regularly until I passed out a year ago, and this is after spending the morning preparing my body for the experience. Every trip usually takes me about an hour (mostly recovery before I can get up) so after passing out I just decided I was taking up too much of their time.......

And I'm not even close to being someone who would be disqualified (i.e., I weigh plenty to give blood).

I concur totally!


I have a fear of needles and believe me last time i donated i passed out. I think the nurse still has teh imprintof my fingers in her hand whenthey had to draw blood 4 yrs ago to find out if i was preg with my son. I have a huge phobia against needles.



So if you have hepatitis she said lie and do it........there is over zelous and then there is stupidity! you pick

Oh, all you squeamish people would have absolutely died if you were there the last time I gave blood. For some reason, after giving, the bandage came off and my blood started spurting.

Granted, I fainted just last month when I thought my mama was going to die, but I keep telling myself that I am capable of doing anything I put my mind to doing.

REALLY???? That has never come up as an issue for me. Of course I have always been sick during blood drives so I have never tried. But I have never had a member of the Red Cross at a Blood Drive tell me I can't donate because I am a diabetic. (Although they should make that more clear cuz sugar levels in the blood are a wee bit different than a normal person.)

But that blows my mind. I am gonna do some research. Be back soon. :p

ETA: Okay back.
Look at http://www.redcross.org/services/bio....html#diabetes
Diabetes mellitus
Acceptable two weeks after starting insulin.
Medications to lower your glucose level do not disqualify you from donating. Those who since 1980, received an injection of bovine (beef) insulin made from cattle from the United Kingdom are not eligible to donate. This requirement is related to concerns about variant CJD, or 'mad cow' disease. Learn more about variant CJD and blood donation.

So Emily, unless you are taking bovine insulin (rare these days...) you can donate. :D

My husband is like some of you. He has a very rare blood type (AB+ <4%) and frequently gets calls from the Blood Center (usually after he has had blood test for something) requesting he donate.

well one time he got a call and politely declined saying he was in a "high risk" group. I about choked on my drink when he said that. "What the hell do you mean you are in a high risk group?" I kinda yelled at him. "He said, you know I am. I am afraid of needles. Risk enough for me!" Milk about came out of my nose then. He is the only 33 year old man I have seen cry in the ER when he was told he had to have a tetnus shot. :)

It's a shame that this incident ever occured. But at least it has made ppl aware of donating blood.

on campus there are blood drives every month - my chapter volunteers every-other one to give out cookies and juice, set-up, etc.
many of the women are encouraged to give but many don't (from phobias of needles to piercings too recent)

I finally made it to one they were working last week...

I was denied - low iron. I felt horrible, almost cried. silly reason but it had been a couple years since I first gave blood and took a lot of courage to go back...

anyway, I guess that's off topic, but it just goes to show that giving blood is a very personal experience and the decision to donate is definitely up to the individual.

Actaully the Canadian Blood Services (who are in charge of blood donations here...not the red cross) say I cannot.

Canadian Blood Service Permanent Deferrals

:eek: I can just imagine what that looks like. For a person who does not like needles, I still want a tattoo :rolleyes:

:(
Well... at least it saves you from those nasty bruises I've seen people get after donating.

hahahaha, not really. I still have to give blood every three months. To my endocrinologist ;) And I bruise really easily.

true true... I "give" blood as well. :P

anyway... sorry... we kinda hijacked this thread.

The clause exists because transmission of AIDS between two men is much more likely to occur than man to woman, or woman to woman. That's not discriminatory, it's just facts. If you are a man having sex with a man, you have a higher RISK of contracting HIV. Doesn't mean all gay men have it, or anything like that. Just basic medical info.

Oh, yeah, and the news of Gamma Phi HQ's official apology has made the "breaking news" section of the Manchester (UK) Guardian's web site, so apparently there's international interest. (Not surprising, actually; concerns problems or potential problems with blood supplies are big deals almost everywhere.)

It's funny... I'm not afraid of blood. That (while gross), would not have bothered me nearly as much as the idea of having to give blood myself.

Back on topic... I have been forwarded the CNN link to this story more times than I care to talk about! Talk about bad PR! What a stupid girl.

Sorry if this has already been said, but this made the front page of CNN.com

I think it was assumed in the post right before yours...........

This really doesn't surprise me. I really hope that it makes the HQ of GLOs take a stance on this. Blood drive is a big deal at Pitt (I wouldn't mind giving if it didn't end up being a 3 hour long ordeal.... way too many people at once)- there's a points system. Just recently (i believe) they did away with deferral points. That meant that someone (for example, who just got a tattoo and knew they couldn't donate) would go, get interviewed and tested and all of that, only to get turned away so they could get a partial credit.

What a waste of time.

Living in a city with many hospitals and thousands of operating procedures going on every day, donating blood is a big deal.

Yay for everyone who gives blood and is proud of it, but it's really a personal decision and for anyone to bully someone into giving blood is just wrong. It seems weird to me that it's such an important thing on so many campuses -- it should be optional, and if you don't want to or can't give blood, you should have an opportunity to be of service in some other way. I wouldn't feel comfortable asking someone else to give blood in my place -- I don't think it's fair to ask someone to do what I wouldn't do myself.

This has me wondering about Greek Week events on campuses around the country -- what's the point of sororities and fraternities competing with each other, anyway?

What I don't get is why this made national news. It's just silly. It was just an email!

To me, it's like emailing students in high school, and saying, "Come cheer on our football team or ELSE!!!"

Or else, what? I won't be popular? Expelled from school?

I just don't understand why an email to a club got so much overexposure. Oh wait, never mind. It was a club with Greek letters. Which means that they drink, fornicate and pull more pranks leading to major bodily harm-- more so than any other students of that age. Of course!

This girl was a sophomore-- 19 years old. She was just trying to rally the troops to participate. Granted, her language and persuasive powers weren't well articulated, but she's just a kid. The media should give it a rest!

On the other hand, being 19 and having greek letters on your chest is no excuse for acting like an idiot. We should expect even 19 year olds to show some level of maturity, and GLO's should foster this, not make excuses for the lack of it.

It's supposed to be a friendly competition and a time for all Greeks to come together and at the great majority of schools, it is. I don't think we need to question the whole concept of Greek Week just because one person in one chapter got a little overzealous.

I see this as being a big deal. And I don't think a fair comparison to send an e-mail about this versus one that says lie about donating blood.

This could have been a huge health care issues with irreversible consequences. I don't care if she was greek, to me that is a non issue. And, feel the media shouldn't either but I'm sure it adds that "spice" to the story.

She's 19, sure, we all make mistakes but she made a huge one and is now paying.

To me, this is a health care issue that needs addressing and not at all greek issue.

What she did was wrong. Imagine someone giving blood who is knowingly HIV or has Hepatitis but not strong enough willed to not give blood. That blood makes it in the blood supply and then we have a potential epidemic on our hands.

Not to be overly dramatic but it's possible. It just takes one bad move to get the ball rolling on another bad move, and so on.

I don't know a thing about giving blood, but I would hope that they test it for diseases and don't just take the word of the people donating. Don't they? Anybody could lie or not know.

JUST an email?! Asking 170 girls to donate blood even if they were in no condition to do so is a very serious situation! In no way can you compare that to being told to cheer for a football team.

I would hope so! I read an article the other day about how some 20% (or some number) of people infected with HIV don't even know they have it!

I just can't believe there would be members who are so gullible and weak-willed enough to take that email seriously. If you're recently ill, inked, or diseased... or you have an aversion to giving blood, I can't imagine that a little sophmore promising dire consquences for not rolling up your sleeve wouldn't get more than a couple of rolled eyes.

But apparently, I am wrong, and sick people can be persuaded to open their veins in the name of "Trophy."

I'm not excusing the sophomore-- I'm just surprised she was taken at face value. That's all. I'm impressed at the level of attention this has gotten from the media.

Question-- I seem to recall that when you go to give blood, they do a quick test on you first, to make sure your blood is normal. Don't they still do that? They're not going to release blood into the blood banks without first testing it. As someone else said, there are plenty of people walking around with diseases they aren't even aware of.

They do test blood for diseases, especially for HIV and hepetitis.Yes, they do, but in this case "normal" = "non-anemic." You can't donate blood if you're anemic; their theory is that if you don't have enough red cells for your own body, you shouldn't be siphoning off for others.

Check out the blood-specific portion of the Red Cross's website.

Maybe this is crappy of me to say, but since this is my school and I know what the greek system here is actually like, I can almost bet money that Gamma Phi wasn't the only house that had an email or announcement like this. Maybe not all houses emailed it out, but I'm sure it got around one way or another. And Gamma Phi and this girls email just happened to be the ones who got caught. This competitiveness is just how our campus is though, I'm not saying that all this stuff is right or wrong, but like I said before I am NOT surprised in the least.

I read in one of the articles on CNN I believe that Gamma Phi Beta is going to lose all their blood points which totally totally sucks that they're all getting punished for what this one girl did. And their partner, a large house who doesn't do homecoming and usually wins or at least places in Greek week, well I doubt they're going to be too happy with them. :( It also said something about all the fraternities and sororities here are now going to have to go through blood safety education classes, which sounds really really boring, b/c we all already know the safety stuff. Some people just choose to ignore it obviously. :rolleyes:

Okay, for Greek Week, we collected can tabs. CAN TABS! Blood is just so....it's too much of a big deal to make into a contest. I can't believe that 1-such a big deal has been made out of it, and 2-the sorority is now going to lose all the pints that they did donate? This whole thing is bizarre....:rolleyes:

Has anybody else wondered how the two original newspapers even found out about this email?

I don't defend the woman who sent the email at all, but I surely hope that if a sister/brother sends an email to the whole chapter that upsets a member, that it is brought up in a meeting and discussed rather than sent to the media. It should have been brought to someone's attention and been handled internally.

Dee

Co-sign...when I found out, I was like, too bad that same email has probably been sent on 14 other chapter listserves at Mizzou...

And am I the only one who thinks part of the blame lies on the Red Cross? She wanted girls to go and donate even if they shouldn't, using the excuse that they could tell the Red Cross workers to use the "Do Not Use My Blood" sticker...why is that even an option? A few people mentioned it was so that you could discretely exclude yourself from giving if you didn't want to say why, but you go through a rigorous round of questions (the "Have you had sex w/a man before 1974" comes to mind) before you give, therefore making that sticker kind of useless.

They said on the news it was sent to an individual "not in GPhi". I'm guessing, since it was on a listserve, it was someone who had deactivated or something like that.

I can see how it is wrong, but I don't think its huge enough to make national news...

I'm sure she saw it as a competition strategy: tell people it is an option, and it is much more likely that the squeamish ones won't think twice about objecting.. Tell them they have to, and get more points.

Not that this should be condoned at all, it is messed up.. But when competition is so high, people do stupid things. Similar things happen everywhere theres competition, most just aren't made national. I was part of a similar experience in high school for football when i was told that anyone (of age 18 or older) who did not give blood would not play... (money was donated to the program for % of eligable players who contributed) Sucks, but it happens.. Just don't think it is worth making national.

To prevent this, I think that so much emphasis should not be put on #s or %s of donations... People are gonna try to win, and to me it is pretty obvious that something like this would happen..

My 2 cents..
-Matt

Ok, why would anyone go through the giving of blood, and wasting of staff time, just to put a do not use sticker on it? My god, it's not like a trip to the candy store, it's kind of a not so pleasant experience.

I totally agree that it's not worth half the hype it's getting, but it's a lil too easy to go, "give me a break! They did it just b/c they were intimidated or wanted to be cool?!" I have no idea if G Phi does this, but many sororities at Mizzou fine if you don't give or have 3 people give for you. My wallet would be motivation to do something like that.

I think that's just completely crazy! I can't donate blood because I'm anemic and have also been known to get woozy when someone tries to draw blood. I don't think I should have to explain myself, nor should I have to chase down 3 people to make up for my not donating.

To me, its not philanthropy if its something you're forced to do under threat of fines. Donate blood because you believe its the right thing to do.

I liken it to Greek Week sponsored hazing. Forcing you to do something to your body?

Which stupid sister gave the email to someone who was going to exploit it? They should expell her for being dumb.