Students take swabs to save lives

Organizers of a bone marrow drive hope their friend Lindsey Rawot will find a match.

The drive in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Frangipani Room on Monday registered 952 people. The insides of their mouths were swabbed. Their names will join 12 million others on a national registry.

If the donor has tissue matching a leukemia patient’s, the donor could give stem cells or bone marrow, which could save the patient’s life.

Rawot graduated from Duke University last year. Before that school year she was diagnosed with lymphoma and needs a stem cell transplant to survive.

She is a bright woman who had perfect scores on her ACT, friends said. At Duke, she joined the sorority Delta Delta Delta. She graduated on time, despite her disease, and got a job offer — which she had to give up.

“The whole thing is it’s rare to be a match,” IU graduate Kyle Sullivan said.
Sullivan went to school with Rawot at Chagrin Falls High School in Ohio.

About one in 100,000 people are matches and only six out of 10 people with leukemia will find a match, Sullivan said.

About 20 student groups, including several greek houses, helped run the drive. Another high school friend, IU graduate RJ Campbell, said he contacted IU Student Association President Peter Servaas, who sent a mass e-mail to several student groups.

Senior Patrick Cogan, who also went to school with Rawot, used his position as a student manager for the men’s basketball team and his contacts to get basketballs signed by Tom Crean, the Indiana Pacers, Pacer floor tickets, IU hats and several other raffle items.

“I used all the people I knew to make this as big as it can be,” he said.
At one point, the Pacers cheerleaders showed up.

IU Treasurer MaryFrances McCourt stayed most of the day. She said her son is friends with Rawot, she was from the same area and she was also a Tri-Delt at Duke, like Rawot. What the organizers did in just three weeks is amazing, she said.
“Can’t say no to a human life,” she said.

Similar drives were also held in Chagrin, New York; Washington, D.C.; and Duke University, where Rawot also had connections, Sullivan said.