You’ve heard the plea: Donate blood, save lives. A number of brave Skyline students responded to the call last week during the ASSC Spring Fling by donating their blood for a greater cause.

“I’m nervous about the needle; I know it will hurt, but we have to sacrifice something, right?” said Marcela Araujo, Skyline student and first-time blood donor. “I want to save a life today.”

Last year, Skyline collected over 115 pints of blood during its annual blood drive. On April 25, the bar was set higher for Skyline College’s 35th annual blood drive. The American Red Cross sponsored two mobile blood drive locations on campus last week. One of the locations was a large blood donation mobile truck, which was set up outside of Building 4. A second mobile donation site was set up on the second floor of building six.

Sarah Dahms, Account Manager at American Red Cross Blood Services, explained the importance of donating blood: “We’re constantly at a deficit trying to collect blood; there’s no substitute.”

Dahms continued: “We need people to donate in order to help patients in our community because patients need blood every day at hospitals, so we’re always encouraging people to give back to the community in that way.”

Now that you understand the necessity of blood donations, you should know that you must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to donate. You must be healthy, be 17 or older and weigh 110 pounds or more. Even if you meet those qualifications, your donation eligibility may be deferred if you recently received a tattoo or traveled outside the country.

Dahms went on to give these facts about eligible donors: “About 38 percent of the population is eligible to donate nationally, and of that group, only 5 percent does donate, and locally only 3 percent donate.”

Although there is a need for blood donors, many potential donors, like Marcela Araujo, must first overcome their fear of needles. For others, donating blood was never a problem. Skyline student Richard Berberena has been donating blood for multiple years at blood drives, and he explained why he donates blood regularly.

“It’s for the good cause; I understand there’s a very problematic shortage of blood,” Berberena said. “There’s not enough people going out and donating, so if there was an abundance of blood, these trucks wouldn’t be coming out to us.”

For every Skyline student who donated blood, a free T-shirt was given to them in appreciation; additionally, the names of every blood donor were entered in a raffle for the chance to win a Skyline College sweatshirt.

Three ten-dollar gift certificates to the Skyline bookstore were also being raffled off to all of the brave people who donated or even attempted to donate at Skyline that day.

As the results of the turnout rate have not been reported yet, Skyline remains hopeful that over 115 units of blood were collected, enough to surpass last year’s blood drive.