Bethel Blood Dri­ves Fill All Avail­able Ap­point­ments

MISHAWAKA—Bethel has hosted sev­eral blood dri­ves over the years or­ga­nized by var­i­ous teams and in­di­vid­u­als, and this school year the blood dri­ves are headed up by Life Granville, a ju­nior ma­jor­ing in ac­count­ing and fi­nance.  

Granville, who plays for the men’s bas­ket­ball team, re­ceived this re­spon­si­bil­ity as part of the Red Cross Col­le­giate Lead­er­ship Pro­gram, an op­por­tu­nity his coach en­cour­aged him to try out for dur­ing the 2019-2020 school year. The pro­gram helps stu­dents de­velop lead­er­ship skills and en­cour­age their peers to vol­un­teer with the Red Cross. 

“I thought it was a cool op­por­tu­nity,” Granville said. “I ap­plied for the schol­ar­ship, and then I ended up in­ter­view­ing once, twice, and then I got it.” 

Nor­mally, Granville would have flown to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to re­ceive train­ing with the 12 other schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents se­lected from across the coun­try, but COVID-19 al­tered these plans. 

“We ended up do­ing a vir­tual train­ing,” Granville said, “on how the blood dri­ves work, why peo­ple need blood, dif­fer­ent blood types, all that good stuff.” 

For the blood dri­ves, Granville over­sees book­ing the room, se­cur­ing the proper equip­ment, en­list­ing vol­un­teers and re­cruit­ing donors. There have been three blood dri­ves thus far in the se­mes­ter, and each one has filled the 60-ap­point­ment limit. These dri­ves were held in the Ever­est-Rohr ro­tunda, but Granville is look­ing into other lo­ca­tion op­tions that would pro­vide enough space to in­crease the num­ber of ap­point­ments they can sched­ule while main­tain­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing.  

Dur­ing the Fall 2020 se­mes­ter, Granville went through an ex­pe­ri­ence that showed him the im­por­tance of blood dri­ves. 

“I got sick in Au­gust, pretty much I was sup­posed to die, I was pro­nounced pretty much dead at one point,” Granville said. “But it was a mir­a­cle, God saved my life, and then I ended up get­ting the same thing come back in Sep­tem­ber.” 

This was Granville’s first time be­ing ex­posed to so many sick in­di­vid­u­als at once. 

“It was just re­ally eye-open­ing to see a lot of peo­ple that need blood,” Granville said. “I had al­ready got the schol­ar­ship, I al­ready knew what I had to do, and I saw that what I was go­ing to do would make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ple’s lives.” 

Granville ex­pressed thank­ful­ness to every­one who has vol­un­teered with the blood dri­ves and do­nated blood.  

There should be one more blood drive later this se­mes­ter, though de­tails are still pend­ing. There will be posters around cam­pus to keep stu­dents up­dated.