The school held its annual UCLA Blood Drive in collaboration with the Parent Association and Community Council.
The majority of donors for the blood drive are comprised of students.
“If we provide a place where students can come and donate for the very first time, be with their friends, be in a comfortable surrounding and have a good experience, they are more likely to become donors for life, and that’s what we are hoping to have our kids develop into being,” event coordinator and Executive Assistant to the President Anne-Marie Whitman said.
In order to be eligible to donate blood, participants were required to undergo a process involving a health questionnaire and a blood and health history examination with a nurse. Some students who donated blood for the first time expressed that they appreciated the opportunity to give back to the community in this way.
“I felt like since I just turned 16, it was such a cool opportunity to have and a cool thing to do, so I decided I needed to take advantage of it,” first-time donor Eve Baxter ’19 said.
Despite meeting the necessary requirements to participate in the drive, some students experienced dizziness or nausea after donating.
“When they raised my chair, I just got super light- headed and loopy, and then my face just turned totally white,” Baxter said. “The nurse rushed over and had to put my chair all the way back, covered me in ice packs and had me breath into a bag.”
Community Council worked to recruit donors and help coordinate the logistics of the day.
After a successful drive, students expressed their appreciation for the drive overall.
“Hosting the drive within the Harvard-Westlake community was also really great because a lot of people might not have necessarily gone out of their ways to seek out UCLA, but by having the drive at school, it became an apparent part of their day and had people talking about an issue that is really important,” Community Council member Serena Davis ’17 said.