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Local blood drives need student donors, volunteers
CHRIS
COBB
Columnist
I always hold my breath as they push
the needle into my arm. It’s not very
painful but my eyes tear up a little
anyway. Once the needle is in, it feels like
someone is pinching me underneath the
skin. Five or so minutes later, the task is
finished and I’m on my way.
June 10, I donated blood for the 10th
time. I’ve donated more than a gallon of
blood since I was in high school.
Unfortunately, I was one of only 227
people who took the time to donate when Blood Care
held their three-day blood drive here on campus.
“Only 210 units were projected to be collected, but
300 were hoped for,” said Patti Moody, donor
recruiter for Blood Care. This number is up from the
past two summers when Blood Care collected
donations on campus.
In the summer of 1992, 180 units were collected
over five days. The summer of 1993, when the blood
drive lasted three days, 202 units were collected.
The number of donations has improved when
compared to previous years, but still is still
disappointing when compared to the number of
people attending summer school.
According to Don Carter, registrar for Texas
A&M, there is a combined total of 17,424 students
enrolled in the first five-week session and the 10-
week summer school session. When compared to
s.
the 210 units
collected, this turn
out is very poor. In
fact, it is only
about 1.15 percent
of the students
attending summer
school during these
two sessions. Last
spring, with over
40,000 students in
attendance, only 1,235 units were collected — 3.1
percent of the total student population. This
proportion is unbelievably low.
One main problem is the organization of the
blood drives. “Only five to 10 people help
organize the blood drives,” said Patti Moody.
“This is not near enough people. The more people
that get involved in planning the blood drives,
the more people will donate.”
Student organizations should become involved.
There are approximately 650 student groups on
campus, including fraternities and sororities. If
even one person from each organization got
involved in promoting and participating in blood
drives, there would be many more students aware
of campus blood donations.
Despite all of Moody’s efforts — door hangers
in the dorms, notices on pizza boxes and direct
mailings — Moody says many of the students she
talks don’t even know there is a blood drive until
they see Blood Care vehicles parked by Sbisa or
the MSC.
Blood Care services 70 hospitals and medical
facilities, which require 450 units of blood every day.
In 1993 there was not one month that Blood Care
had a large enough blood supply.
Many people do not give blood because they are
afraid. Needles are scary, especially when they are
Last spring, with over 40,000 stu
dents at A&M, 1,235 blood units
were collected. Only 3.1 percent
of the student population donated.
nine inches long and shoved deep into the person’s
head. NOT REALLY! This is, of course, not how
blood donations are taken. The needle isn’t very big
and is inserted into the arm. The sensation of the
needle in the arm is as if someone is lightly pinching
underneath the skin, as I described before.
Some people do not donate blood because they
fear contracting AIDS. This concern is completely
unfounded. The needles used for donations are
used only once. After the donation, they are
disposed of and cannot be used again.
Another reason people do not donate blood is they
do not think they will feel well after making a <
donation. From my personal experience, if you eat “ '
before donating and eat a nutritious meal
afterwards, you should feel fine. However, some
slight fatigue should be expected afterward.
Is this not worth the sacrifice?
On a national level, only five percent of the
American population ever gives blood, while 70
percent of us will need a transfusion sometime
during our lives. Thirty-five percent of blood
donations are used for cancer and heart disease
patients. The blood is also used for those with
injuries, liver and kidney diseases, gastrointestinal
tract diseases and other needs.
Blood Care will return in the fall semester
from November 7 through the 11. If interested in .
volunteering, please call Patti Moody at 1 -800-
366-2834, extension 8549.
If the only reason you’re giving blood is to get a t-
shirt to avoid doing laundry for another day, we all t ;
still need your donation. Think of the life you may be
saving in the process. If you are not donating blood,
think of the life you could have helped save ...
Chris S. Cobb is a senior English major .
Writing takes off as right career
'Sylvia Plan' advises choosing jobs based on personal interest, talent
JULIA
STAVENHAGEN
Columnist
S ylvia regarded me as though I had
three heads. “What? Are you
kidding?” She laughed. I had just
asked her how long she had known she
wanted to be a writer. This was not the
response I expected. “Honey,” she began,
waggling a finger at me, “I NEVER knew I
wanted to be a writer.” She smiled then,
while I sorted through my confusion.
Do you remember the major you
started out with in college? Chances are, it
isn’t the same one you have now. What made you change?
Perhaps it was that organic chemistry grade that never got
above a D, no matter how many times you took the class. Or
maybe you discovered that every history class you took bored
you to tears - even though you were a history major.
A friend of mine spent hundreds of dollars on the Franklin
Mint’s Civil War chess set, convincing himself he was a Civil
War history buff. Then he spent an abysmal semester trying to
figure out why history suddenly seemed horribly “wrong.”
Around finals, he sat staring miserably at his chess set only to
realize that it wasn’t the Civil War angle that attracted him to
blow his savings, but the strategy of the game itself. Chess
echoed principle military tactics of great war battles. Basking
in a dawning light, he chariged his major to military science.
His aqbdemic career suddenly thrived.
Sometimes graduation with a degree does not guarantee
which path will become your career life. When Jeffrey, who
was a business major, found it impossible to get a job in his
major field after graduation, he found employment at the
Houston Jiffy Lube to pay the rent. After a “semester” or
two, mechanical ability began to surface, and he took a
hairpin turn on life’s highway. He now has an interesting
and well-paying job as a mechanic.
For some, this turn becomes a dead man’s curve. After
career alternatives are exhausted, the pioneering spirit
begins to fade. This is where Sylvia found herself. Failed
careers in nursing, cosmetology and art left her hopeless and
broke. She moved to a bigger city without finding job success.
Every night, she would write in a journal to console herself
and examine her situation. Having written every day for
years to stave off a feeling of loneliness, she became very
good at the imaginative craft without really knowing it.
"I couldn’t see the forest for the trees,” she says. While
enrolling in a vocational class at an employment agency, she
saw a flier asking for submissions to the
town’s literary magazine. She submitted a
story and was published immediately.
“From that day on, the right doors
just began to open up. My working life
started out as a big hallway with every
door to the craziest things open on both
sides. I kept going into each only to
find a dead end. As all of them closed
on me, I discovered my hall had one big
neon-red door at the end with a giant
sign on it that said ‘writer.’ I never could have noticed it
until the other doors were shut, though.”
Sylvia got a job as a columnist at the newspaper in her
town. She says it is the most fulfilling job she’s ever had. She
never considered writing as a way to support herself, although
it was what came most easily to her. As is the case in many
small towns, Sylvia’s community did not consider -writing as a
viable career. When she moved to a larger city, she took that
attitude with her, where it was a contributing factor to her
dismissal of writing jobs for career choices.
I asked her why she felt writing was going to stay her
favorite career. “It is natural to me, like breathing. I could
have avoided a lot of grief if I had looked to what I loved
from the start, but it took me 20 years to figure out I could
actually make money at it.”
I mumbled something about getting lucky, but I knew
she was right.
There are people who know exactly what they want before
they graduate from high school — kids who know from age 12
that they want to be nuclear engineers. There are also those
parents who have already decided what their children will do.
Then there are those of us who choose our career paths in the
manner of chasing a wild squirrel through the underbrush;
sometimes grabbing the wrong squirrel. It is simple to get a job
you need, but don’t like. Many people are too frightened of
poverty to consider letting go of the squirrel they have and
continuing the search for the right one.
Being poor is no big deal, but being poor stinks if you’re
miserable day after day while working at a hideous job.
Happiness or wealth. It is within everyone’s power to choose
which is top priority, but I try to avoid the "Sylvia Plan” and
look to my heart before it’s too late to change.
Julia Stavenhagen is a graduate anthropology student
Majl
Call
Religions reach same
goal in different ways
In regard to Brian Schneider’s June
15 letter to Mail Call: I would like to
correct some concepts pertaining to
Buddhism.
First, Buddha was born around 563
B.C. and died in 483 B.C. That was
about 550 years earlier than Jesus.
Apparently, it is a mistake to say that
“Jesus taught compassion way before
Buddha was born.”
It’s a misunderstanding to say that
the teaching of salvation in Buddhism
is by self-effort only. It’s clearly writ
ten in the teaching of salvation: one is
monks and nuns: one is the sutras,
disciplines, and treatises; the other is
“self-effort”. The first two teach you
what you should do while the last one
is asking you to perform.
I believe that all Christians agree
that to accept God is not the same as
to believe in God. They ask for your
performance of the virtues in the
Bible. After you believe, the "seed” of
enlightenment, or the Holy Spirit in
terms of Christians’ terminology, will
■■■■■iiaiitsi
live with you.
Finally, the “definition” of Chris
tianity and Buddhism of hell and
heaven is almost the same. Schneider
said, “Hell is a place replete with eter
nal suffering, eternal damnation, eter
nal fire, continual anguish, and con
stant darkness, while heaven is a
place without any suffering, anguish,
or darkness.” Buddhism has a similar
but more detailed description.
I believe that all religions have the
same highest target but with different
ways to reach it. Who can tell you
which way is the best? Believe me, no
body will say their religion is the sec
ond best.
Ho-Chyuan Chen
Graduate Student
Fathers’ Day Gift Giving*
inepeoKP *
The Battalion
Editorial Board
Mark Evans, Editor in chief
William Harrison, Managing editor
jay Robbins, Opinion editor
Editorials appearing in The Battalion reflect
the views of the editorial board. They do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of other
Battalion staff members, the Texas A&M
student body, regents; administration, faculty
or staff. : : > ,
Columns, guest columns, cartoons and
letters express the opinions of the authors.
Contact the opinion editor for information
on submitting guest columns.
Power plant failure I
*
*
A&M System still must meet future needs
When the Texas A&M System dis
continued negotiations to build a new
cogeneration power plant on west cam
pus, the University avoided a poten
tially risky economic and financial
obligation.
This loss still is unfortunate, as it
will deprive A&M of a much needed
upgrading of its power generation fa
cilities. The new
cogeneration fa
cility would have
provided for all of
A&M’s power
needs and then
some.
The projected
cost of the project
was $120 million.
It would have
provided A&M
with a much-
needed power
source that, ac
cording to estimates, would have pro
vided for the future utility needs of the
campus through the year 2012.
According to Richard Lindsay, vice
chancellor for finance and operations
for the A&M system, negotiations were
called off because of the University
was unable to secure an agreement for
the purchase of back-up power or the
sale of excess power.
Anti-Limbaugh column
falls to left-wing flaws
I was reading the June 16 guest col
umn written by J. Sterling Hayman on
the and was struck by the irony of it
all. Here was someone writing about
“ignoring opposing views” and “free-
thinking independence,” and yet his
column was replete with distortions
and misrepresentations. This individ
ual even goes so far as to link Rush
Limbaugh with the swastika. What a
joke! I could just as easily link Hay-
man with the "hammer and sickle"
symbol, which represents far greater
suffering and death than does the
swastika.
Tenneco Power Generation Co.,
which was to build the facility, also!
failed to find a bond issuer to provide,
funding. Despite the disappointing:
outcome of project negotiations, termi
nating the plan allows the school to ac-“
quire and evaluate studies on the Uni
versity’s future power needs.
The System should keep in mind
the flaws in the
failed project,
while it evaluates,
the findings and
reviews ideas to
meet the UniverL
sity’s needs.
Texas A&M cur>
rently supplies 70t
percent of its own!!
power and buys
the rest from Bra
zos Electric Coop
erative in Waco.
Recent high de
mands on this area’s power supply
forced the company to ask A&M to re
duce temporarily its electricity con
sumption in an effort to prevent elec
tricity blackouts.
Hopefully, a new proposal will soon
be developed that can provide a plan
for building the facilities Texas A&M
will depend on well into the next cen
tury.
Picking apart Hayman’s column
line by line, as easy as that would be,
would be a colossal waste of time. Suf
fice it to say that someone from the po
litical left talking about open-minded
ness, noncomformity and diversity of
opinions is like Saddam Hussein talk
ing about human rights.
Kani Sathasivam
Graduate Student
The Battalion encour
age* letters to the editor
and will print as many as
space allows. Letters
mus< be 300 words or
less and include the au
thor's name, class and
phono number.
We reserve the right
to edit letters for length,
style and accuracy. :
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