[media-credit name=”Ember Drake” align=”alignleft” width=”300″][/media-credit]February is a time full of love, candy, and hearts, but instead of pumping out cheesy Valentine’s cards, students are encouraged to pump out some blood for the annual blood drive on Feb. 21.

Associated Student Body’s Human Relations committee is in the process of organizing this blood drive for the Carlmont community.

“Unfortunately, this event has not been very popular in the past,” said supervisor Bita Shahrvini. “However, we want to see a change this year in student, family, and teacher participation.”

This year, Human Relations has begun publicizing early, via posters, teasers, fliers, the Carlmont website, and will be hanging up banners around the school once sign ups begin.

According to commissioner Annie Klups, ASB will be handing out free bracelets and t-shirts to people who sign up and donate blood.

“They are bright red and really cool,” said Klups. “I wear my bracelet to school to advertise for the drive.”

Considering the size of the school, one would assume that a large amount of people would participate in something like this for a good cause. However, last year, the blood drive attracted merely 30 student donors and zero faculty participants.

This year, Shahrvini hopes to break that record and get up to 100 sign ups.

Even though Human Relations has goal set and is ready to make this event successful, there are still many problems and obstacles to that stand in the way of having strong participation in the drive.

“We think one of the reasons for the lack of interest in the blood drive is the limited knowledge of what exactly goes on while giving blood, the requirements to actually donate, and the important dates to remember,” Shahrvini said.

“Right now, we are trying to get the word at through as many venues as possible. We are even trying to speak about it at the upcoming PTSA meeting on Feb. 5,” said Klups.

Another reason students generally do not participate, according to Shahrvini, is the amount of time students must miss of class to have their blood drawn. Since Carlmont is very academic-based and highly challenging, some students refuses to miss even 30 minutes of their education.

Also, since Carlmont is very sports-oriented, many athletes cannot donate blood or they will have to miss practice or a game that day.

Despite these complications Shahrvini and Klups remain confident that this year the blood drive will be different and they can’t wait for sign ups to start on Jan. 28.