IU and Purdue battle for blood

IU and Purdue are competing again. But this time, it's not for championships or banners. This time, they are out for blood -- donations, that is.\nThe blood drive, which started Oct. 27, runs until Nov. 17. The two rivals are competing in the fifth annual Blood Donor Challenge, sponsored by the alumni associations from both schools.\n"We're actually doing this in blood centers and everywhere else," said Jacinda Musgrave, who is a phlebotomist for the Indiana Blood Center, referring to all of the Indiana Blood Center's facilities across the state.\nA phlebotomist specializes in opening veins.\nThe Indiana Blood Center has worked the blood donor challenge all five years.\n"At the centers, we ask people who they want to donate for, and then they'll announce the winner at the Nov. 24 football game (between IU and Purdue)," Musgrave said.\nMusgrave works out of Columbus, Ind., which is a blood center off of the main facility in Indianapolis, where all of the state's donated blood is shipped.\nPrimarily, the students are the ones that donate the most blood, Musgrave said.\n"It's the students that usually get this organized," Musgrave said. \nThe football game, which is played between IU and Purdue in Bloomington, will have a halftime presentation, where the president of the winning alumni association will be honored.\nPurdue has taken the championship the past three years, while IU only won the first year.\nThe blood drive, which began in 1997, has grown each year.\n"This will be the biggest year," said Scott Siegel, who is the director of student programs and the assistant alumni director. "I know that this year we have already surpassed the total amount from last year.\n"This is an opportune time to do this and to not only do something that's good for people in the state, but to assist the school in a friendly competition with our rivals from West Lafayette and to do something good and meaningful at the same time."\nSiegel said that the blood drive came out of a desire for cooperation between the two alumni clubs.\n"They wanted to do a joint, community service type project. So there was a decision made to do this blood drive and to make it a friendly competition between the two schools," Siegel said. "Primarily, it's a project that's undertaken by the two alumni clubs in Indianapolis."\nAs of this week, Purdue had received 915 blood donations and IU had brought in 324.\nOne of the main reasons IU is behind, according to Siegel, is because Purdue has an actual Indiana Blood Center facility in West Lafayette, whereas IU has to assign random locations for the donations.\nBlood has already been donated throughout this month at Read Center and Assembly Hall. The last location to donate blood blood on campus will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13 in the Indiana Memorial Union Solarium. \n"The solarium should be a good place to take donations because it's a big area," Siegel said.\nRoshni Patel, a senior living in Foster Quad, found the donation site in Foster's formal lounge by accident Thursday and decided to give blood.\n"I came in to study and I just happened to see it going on," Patel said.\nPatel has given blood before and said she realizes the need for blood in Indiana.\n"I think it's for a really good cause. I think that a lot of people have common myths that it's going to be painful or they that they don't know what to expect," Patel said. "With the tragedy that happened Sept. 11, a lot of people still need blood." \nSiegel agrees.\n"I think there has been and will continue to be a need for blood donations in this state and across the country," Siegel said. \nAlthough both universities are competing to win, the main goal of the competition is to help out the region and central Indiana, Siegel said.\n"The key thing is that the two schools are working together in a community service project that was started by the two clubs in Indianapolis to benefit central Indiana and the state," he said. "The need for blood has been there for sometime"