The American Red Cross took over Morrell Lounge yesterday at one of its regular visits to the College. For more than a decade, the Red Cross has been coming to campus several times a year to collect blood, according to Angela Abourjaily, team supervisor for the Red Cross in Portland. “We rely on all the colleges in Maine,” she said, adding that there’s always a good turnout of student donors at Bowdoin. She anticipated collecting blood from 60 to 65 people by the end of the three-hour drive.

Bowdoin students Jimena Escudero ’13 and Sarah Hirschfeld ’13 have taken over the student tradition of organizing the campus drives. They publicized the event, contacted Papa John’s Pizza (which regularly donates pizza to feed the donors), and scheduled appointments. Abourjaily says the student volunteers “contribute almost everything.”

Escudero says while she can’t donate blood because of her travels, she used to do it regularly in high school. “It’s so easy to do, and means so much to so many people,” she said.