About 300 students crowded in Free Speech Plaza on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and participated in the “Be The Match” campaign.
Event volunteers for Be The Match, the first campus-wide event to accumulate cheek swabs for cancer patients, collected samples from faculty and students who would like to become a member for the bone marrow registry.
Robert Bostick, senator for the College of Agriculture, said the event’s mission is to increase the number of people on the bone marrow registry, a list of volunteers eligible to donate bone marrow.
The patients in need of transplants include those with diseases affecting the blood, such as leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anemia.
“Every year, over 10,000 people need bone marrow transplants and do not have a match in their family,” Bostick said. “Most bone marrow transplants now are very similar to donating blood and no longer require actually going into your out.”
As students arrived at the event, they were presented with a form requiring their basic information. Bostick said the paperwork took about five minutes and was the longest part of the process.
After the individual’s cheeks had been brushed with four separate cotton swabs, event volunteers placed them in a tray to be sent to the national campaign headquarters. The DNA on the cotton swabs will be processed, and the individual will be entered into the bone marrow registry.
Once in the registry, the recipients will receive a verification card in the mail, but will not hear from the registry until a potential match has been located.
But Bostick said the odds of becoming a match are one in 500.
Bostick became interested in starting the program when he volunteered at a hospital cancer center in high school.
“There is a cure,” Bostick said. “It’s other people. I’m a cure for someone out it.”
The event was sponsored by LSU Ambassadors, led by Bostick with help from Student Government, the Residence Hall Association, Freshman Leadership Council, Tigers Donating Life and the University Recreation Center.
 
____
Contact Kate Mabry at [email protected]